THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 
FREDERIC  THOMAS  BLANCHARD 


LATIN    LITERATURE 


Latin   Literature 


Bv  J.  W.   MACKAIL 

SOMETIME    FELLOW   OF  BALLIOL   COLLEGE,  OXFOK» 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  CHICAGO  BOSTON 


COPYRIGHT,  1895,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
I 


PA 


PREFACE. 


A  HISTORY  of  Latin  Literature  was  to  have  been  written 
for  this  series  of  Manuals  by  the  late  Professor  William 
Sellar.  After  his  death  I  was  asked,  as  one  of  his  old 
pupils,  to  carry  out  the  work  which  he  had  undertaken; 
and  this  book  is  DOW  offered  as  a  last  tribute  to  the 
memory  of  my  dear  friend  and  master. 

J.  W.  M. 


681972 


CONTENTS. 


THE   REPUBLIC. 

MOB 

L    ORIGINS   OF   LATIN    LITERATURE:    EARLY    EPIC    AND 

TRAGEDY. 

Andronicus  and  Naevius —  Ennius  —  Pacuvius  —  Decay 
of  Tragedy 3 

II.    COMEDY:  PLAUTUS  AND  TERENCE. 

Origins  of  Comedy  —  Plautus  —  Terence        ...       14 

III.  EARLY  PROSE:  THE  "SATURA,"  OR  MIXED  MODE. 

The  Early  Jurists  —  Cato  —  The  Scipionic  Circle  —  Lu- 
cilius  —  Pre-Ciceronian  Prose         .....      27 

IV.  LUCRETIUS 39 

V.  LYRIC  POETRY:  CATULLUS. 

Cinna  and  Calvus  ........   52 

VI.  CICERO 6a 

VII.  PROSE  OF  THE  CICERONIAN  AGE:  CAESAR  AND  SALLUST. 
Caesar  —  Caesar's  Officers  —  Sallust  —  Nepos  and  Varro 
—  Publilius  Syrus 78 

II. 

THE  AUGUSTAN  AGE. 

I.    VIRGIL 91 

II.    HORACE 106 

vn 


viii  Contents. 

PAGE 

III.  PROPERTIUS  AND  THE  ELEGISTS. 

Augustan  Tragedy  —  Callus  —  Propertius — Tibullus  .     120 

IV.  OVID. 

Julia  and  Sulpicia  —  Ovid 132 

V.     LIVY 145 

VI.    THE  LESSER  AUGUSTANS. 

Minor  Augustan  Poetry  —  Manilius  —  Phaedrus — Tro- 

gus  and  Paterculus — Celsus  —  The  Elder  Seneca        .     156 

III. 

THE  EMPIRE. 

I.    THE  ROME  OF  NERO:  SENECA,  LUCAN,  PETRONIUS. 

Seneca  —  Lucan  —  Persius  —  Columella  —  Petronius  .     171 

II.    THE  SILVER  AGE:   STATIUS,  THE  ELDER  PLINY,  MAR- 
TIAL, QUINTILIAN. 
Statius  —  Silius  Italicui  —  Martial  —  The  Elder  Pliny 

—  Quintilian 186 

III.  TACITUS 205 

IV.  JUVENAL,  THE  YOUNGER  PLINY,  SUETONIUS:  DECAY  OF 

CLASSICAL  LATIN. 

Juvenal  — The  Younger  Pliny  —  Suetonius  —  Aulus 
Gellius 221 

V.    THE  "ELOCUTIO  NOVELLA." 

Fronto  —  Apuleius  —  The  Pervigilium  Veneris    .        .    233 

VI.    EARLY   LATIN  CHRISTIANITY:   MINUCIUS  FELIX,  TE»- 

TULLIAN,  LACTANTIUS. 
Minucius  Felix  —  Tertullian  —  Cyprian  and  Lactantius 

—  Commodianus  —  The  Empire  and  the  Church .         .     247 

VII.    THE  FOURTH  CENTURY:  AUSONIUS  AND  CLAUDIAN. 

Papinian  and  Ulpian :  Samonicus  —  Tiberianus :  the 
Augustan  History  —  Ausonius  —  Claudian  —  Pruden- 
tius  —  Ammianus  Marcellinus  ....  260 


Contents.  ix 

FACE 

VIII.    THK  BEGINNINGS  OF  THE  MIDDLK  AGES. 

The  End  of  the  Ancient  World  —  First  Period  —  Sec- 
ond and  Third  Periods  —  Fourth  Period —The  World 
after  Rome  .  . 275 

INDEX  OF  AUTHOKS    ..**••..*    a&y 


I. 

THE   REPUBLIC. 


ORIGINS  OF  LATIN  LITERATURE:    EARLY   EPIC  AND 
TRAGEDY. 

To  the  Romans  themselves,  as  they  looked  back  two 
hundred  years  later,  the  beginnings  of  a  real  literature 
seemed  definitely  fixed  in  the  generation  which  passed 
between  the  first  and  second  Punic  wars.  The  peace  of 
B.C.  241  closed  an  epoch  throughout  which  the  Roman 
Republic  had  been  fighting  for  an  assured  place  in  the 
group  of  powers  which  controlled  the  Mediterranean  world. 
This  was  now  gained ;  and  the  pressure  of  Carthage  thus 
removed,  Rome  was  left  free  to  follow  the  natural  ex- 
pansion of  her  colonies  and  her  commerce.  Wealth  and 
peace  are  comparative  terms;  it  was  in  such  wealth  and 
peace  as  the  cessation  of  the  long  and  exhausting  war  with 
Carthage  brought,  that  a  leisured  class  began  to  form  itself 
at  Rome,  which  not  only  could  take  a  certain  interest  in 
Greek  literature,  but  felt  in  an  indistinct  way  that  it  was 
their  duty,  as  representing  one  of  the  great  civilised  powers, 
to  have  a  substantial  national  culture  of  their  own. 

That  this  new  Latin  literature  must  be  based  on  that 
of  Greece,  went  without  saying;  it  was  almost  equally 
inevitable  that  its  earliest  forms  should  be  in  the  shape  of 
translations  from  that  body  of  Greek  poetry,  epic  and 
dramatic,  which  had  for  long  established  itself  through  all 
the  Greek-speaking  world  as  a  common  basis  of  culture- 

3 


4  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

Latin  literature,  though  artificial  in  a  fuller  sense  than  that 
of  some  other  nations,  did  not  escape  the  general  law  of 
all  literatures,  that  they  must  begin  by  verse  before  they 
can  go  on  to  prose. 

Up  to  this  date,  native  Latin  poetry  had  been  confined, 
so  far  as  we  can  judge,  to  hymns  and  ballads,  both  of  a 
rude  nature.  Alongside  of  these  were  the  popular  festival- 
performances,  containing  the  germs  of  a  drama.  If  the 
words  of  these  performances  were  ever  written  down  (which 
is  rather  more  than  doubtful),  they  would  help  to  make 
the  notion  of  translating  a  regular  Greek  play  come  more 
easily.  But  the  first  certain  Latin  translation  was  a  piece 
of  work  which  showed  a  much  greater  audacity,  and  which 
in  fact,  though  this  did  not  appear  till  long  afterwards,  was 
much  more  far-reaching  in  its  consequences.  This  was 
a  translation  of  the  Odyssey  into  Saturnian  verse  by  one 
Andronicus,  a  Greek  prisoner  of  war  from  Tarentum,  who 
lived  at  Rome  as  a  tutor  to  children  of  the  governing  class 
during  the  first  Punic  War.  At  the  capture  of  his  city,  he 
had  become  the  slave  of  one  of  the  distinguished  family 
of  the  Livii,  and  after  his  manumission  was  known,  accord- 
ing to  Roman  custom,  under  the  name  of  Lucius  Livius 
Andronicus. 

The  few  fragments  of  his  Odyssey  which  survive  do  not 
show  any  high  level  of  attainment ;  and  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  this  first  attempt  to  create  a  mould  for  Latin 
poetry  went  on  wrong,  or,  perhaps  it  would  be  truer  to  say, 
on  premature  lines.  From  this  time  henceforth  the  whole 
serious  production  of  Latin  poetry  for  centuries  was  a 
continuous  effort  to  master  and  adapt  Greek  structure  and 
versification ;  the  Odyssey  of  Livius  was  the  first  and,  with 
one  notable  exception,  almost  the  last  sustained  attempt 
to  use  the  native  forms  of  Italian  rhythm  towards  any 
large  achievement ;  this  current  thereafter  sets  underground, 
and  only  emerges  again  at  the  end  of  the  classical  period. 
It  is  a  curious  and  significant  fact  that  the  attempt,  such 


I,]  Andronicus  and  Naevius.  5 

as  it  was,  was  made  not  by  a  native,  but  by  a  naturalised 
foreigner. 

The  heroic  hexameter  was,  of  course,  a  metre  much 
harder  to  reproduce  in  Latin  than  the  trochaic  and  iambic 
metres  of  the  Greek  drama,  the  former  of  which  especially 
accommodated  itself  without  difficulty  to  Italian  speech. 
In  his  dramatic  pieces,  which  included  both  tragedies  and 
comedies,  Andronicus  seems  to  have  kept  to  the  Greek 
measures,  and  in  this  he  was  followed  by  his  successors. 
Throughout  the  next  two  generations  the  production  of 
dramatic  literature  was  steady  and  continuous.  Gnaeus 
Naevius,  the  first  native  Latin  poet  of  consequence, 
beginning  to  produce  plays  a  few  years  later  than  Andro- 
nicus, continued  to  write  busily  till  after  the  end  of  the 
second  Punic  War,  and  left  the  Latin  drama  thoroughly 
established.  Only  inconsiderable  fragments  of  his  writings 
survive  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  he  was  a  figure  of  really  great 
distinction.  Though  not  a  man  of  birth  himself,  he  had 
the  skill  and  courage  to  match  himself  against  the  great 
house  of  the  Metelli.  The  Metelli,  it  is  true,  won  the 
battle ;  Naevius  was  imprisoned/  and  finally  died  in  exile ; 
but  he  had  established  literature  as  a  real  force  in  Rome. 
Aulus  Gellius  has  preserved  the  splendid  and  haughty 
verses  which  he  wrote  to  be  engraved  on  his  own  tomb  — 

Immortales  mortales  si  foretfas  flere 
Flerent  divae  Camenae  Naevium  poetam  ; 
Itaque  postquam  est  Orel  traditus  thesauro 
Obliti  sunt  Rotnai  loquier  lingua  Latina. 

The  Latin  Muses  were,  indeed,  then  in  the  full  pride  and 
hope  of  a  vigorous  and  daring  youth.  The  greater  part  of 
Naevius'  plays,  both  in  tragedy  and  comedy,  were,  it  is 
true,  translated  or  adapted  from  Greek  originals;  but 
alongside  of  these,  —  the  Danae,  the  Iphigenia,  the  Andro- 
mache, which  even  his  masculine  genius  can  hardly  have 
made  more  than  pale  reflexes  of  Euripides  —  were  new 


6  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

creations,  "  plays  of  the  purple  stripe,"  as  they  came  to  be 
called,  where  he  wakened  a  tragic  note  from  the  legendary 
or  actual  history  of  the  Roman  race.  His  Alimonium 
Romuli  et  Remi,  though  it  may  have  borrowed  much  from 
the  kindred  Greek  legends  of  Danae  or  Melanippe,  was 
one  of  the  foundation-stones  of  a  new  national  literature ; 
in  the  tragedy  of  Clastidium,  the  scene  was  laid  in  his  own 
days,  and  the  action  turned  on  one  of  the  great  victories 
won  by  those  very  Metelli  whom,  in  a  single  stinging  line, 
he  afterwards  held  up  to  the  ridicule  of  the  nation. 

In  his  advanced  years,  Naevius  took  a  step  of  even 
greater  consequence.  Turning  from  tragedy  to  epic,  he 
did  not  now,  like  Andronicus,  translate  from  the  Greek, 
but  launched  out  on  the  new  venture  of  a  Roman  epic. 
The  Latin  language  was  not  yet  ductile  enough  to  catch 
the  cadences  of  the  noble  Greek  hexameter ;  and  the  native 
Latin  Saturnian  was  the  only  possible  alternative.  How 
far  he  was  successful  in  giving  modulation  or  harmony  to 
this  rather  cumbrous  and  monotonous  verse,  the  few  extant 
fragments  of  the  Bcllum  Punicum  hardly  enable  us  to 
determine ;  it  is  certain  that  it  met  with  a  great  and 
continued  success,  and  that,  even  in  Horace's  time,  it  was 
universally  read.  The  subject  was  not  unhappily  chosen : 
the  long  struggle  between  Rome  and  Carthage  had,  in  the 
great  issues  involved,  as  well  as  in  its  abounding  dramatic 
incidents  and  thrilling  fluctuations  of  fortune,  many  elements 
of  the  heroic,  and  almost  of  the  superhuman ;  and  in  his 
interweaving  of  this  great  pageant  of  history  with  the 
ancient  legends  of  both  cities,  and  his  connecting  it,  through 
the  story  of  Aeneas,  with  the  war  of  Troy  itself,  Naevius 
showed  a  constructive  power  of  a  very  high  order.  It  is, 
doubtless,  possible  to  make  too  much  of  the  sweeping 
statements  made  in  the  comments  of  Macrobius  and  Servius 
on  the  earlier  parts  of  the  Aeneid — "this  passage  is  all 
taken  from  Naevius  ;  "  "  all  this  passage  is  simply  conveyed 
from  Naevius'  Punif  War"  Yet  there  is  no  doubt  that 


I.]  Enmus.  7 

Virgil  owed  him  immense  obligations ;  though  in  the  details 
of  the  war  itself  we  can  recognise  little  in  the  fragments 
beyond  the  dry  and  disconnected  narrative  of  the  rhyming 
chronicler.  Naevius  laid  the  foundation  of  the  Roman 
epic ;  he  left  it  at  his  death  —  in  spite  of  the  despondent 
and  perhaps  jealous  criticism  which  he  left  as  his  epitaph  — 
in  the  hands  of  an  abler  and  more  illustrious  successor. 

Quintus  Ennius,  the  first  of  the  great  Roman  poets,  and 
a  figure  of  prodigious  literary  fecundity  and  versatility,  was 
born  at  a  small  town  of  Calabria  about  thirty  years  later 
than  Naevius,  and,  though  he  served  as  a  young  man  in  the 
Roman  army,  did  not  obtain  the  full  citizenship  till  fifteen 
years  after  Naevius'  death.  For  some  years  previously  he 
had  lived  at  Rome,  under  the  patronage  of  the  great  Scipio 
Africanus,  busily  occupied  in  keeping  up  a  supply  of 
translations  from  the  Greek  for  use  on  the  Roman  stage. 
The  easier  circumstances  of  his  later  life  do  not  seem  to 
have  in  any  way  diminished  his  fertility  or  the  care  which 
he  lavished  on  the  practice  of  his  art.  He  was  the  first 
instance  in  the  Western  world  of  the  pure  man  of  letters. 
Alongside  of  his  strictly  literary  production,  he  occupied 
himself  diligently  with  the  technique  of  composition  — 
grammar,  spelling,  pronunciation,  metre,  even  an  elementary 
system  of  shorthand.  Four  books  of  miscellaneous  transla- 
tions from  popular  Greek  authors  familiarised  the  reading 
public  at  Rome  with  several  branches  of  general  literature 
hitherto  only  known  to  scholars.  Following  the  demand 
of  the  market,  he  translated  comedies,  seemingly  with 
indifferent  success.  But  his  permanent  fame  rested  on  two 
great  bodies  of  work,  tragic  and  epic,  in  both  of  which  he 
far  eclipsed  his  predecessors. 

We  possess  the  names,  and  a  considerable  body  of  frag- 
ments, of  upwards  of  twenty  of  his  tragedies ;  the  greater 
number  of  the  fragments  being  preserved  in  the  works  of 
Cicero,  who  was  never  tired  of  reading  and  quoting  him. 
As  is  usual  with  such  quotations,  they  throw  light  more  on 


8  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

his  mastery  of  phrase  and  power  of  presenting  detached 
thoughts,  than  on  his  more  strictly  dramatic  qualities. 
That  mastery  of  phrase  is  astonishing.  From  the  silver 
beauty  of  the  moonlit  line  from  his  Melanippe  — 

Lumine  sic  tremulo  terra  et  cava  caerula  candent, 
to  the  thunderous  oath  of  Achilles  — 

Per  ego  deum  sublintas  subices 
Umidas,  unde  oritur  imber  sonitu  saevo  et  spiritu 

they  give  examples  of  almost  the  whole  range  of  beauty 
of  which  the  Latin  language  is  capable.  Two  quotations 
may  show  his  manner  as  a  translator.  The  first  is  a  frag- 
ment of  question  and  reply  from  the  splendid  prologue 
to  the  Iphigenia  at  Aulis,  one  of  the  most  thrilling  and 
jomantic  passages  in  Attic  poetry — 

Agam.    Quid  noctf  videtur  in  altisono 

Caeti  clupeo? 
Senex.  Temo  superat 

Cogens  sublime  etiam  atque  etiam 

Noctis  iter. 

What  is  singular  here  is  not  that  the  mere  words  are 
wholly  different  from  those  of  the  original,  but  that  in  the 
apparently  random  variation  Ennius  produces  exactly  the 
same  strange  and  solemn  effect.  This  is  no  accident :  it 
is  genius.  Again,  as  a  specimen  of  his  manner  in  more 
ordinary  narrative  speeches,  we  may  take  the  prologue  to 
his  Medea,  where  the  well-known  Greek  is  pretty  closely 
followed  — 

Utinam  ne  in  nemore  Petto  securibus 
Caesa  cecidisset  abiegna  ad  terram  trabes, 
Neve  inde  navis  inchoandae  exordium 
Coepisset,  quae  nunc  nominatur  nomine 
Argff,  quia  Argivi  in  ea  dilecti  viri 


J.J  Ennius.  g 

Vecti petebant pellem  inauratam  arietis 

Colchis,  imperio  regis  Peliae,  per  dolum  : 

Nam  nunquam  era  errans  mea  domo  ecferret  pedem 

Medea,  animo  acgra,  amore  saevo  saucia. 

At  first  reading  these  lines  may  seem  rather  stiff  and 
ungraceful  to  ears  familiar  with  the  liquid  lapse  of  the 
Euripidean  iambics ;  but  it  is  not  till  after  the  second  or 
even  the  third  reading  that  one  becomes  aware  in  them  of 
a  strange  and  austere  beauty  of  rhythm  which  is  distinctively 
Italian.  Specially  curious  and  admirable  is  the  use  of 
elision,  in  the  eighth,  for  instance,  and  even  more  so  in  the 
fifth  line,  so  characteristic  alike  of  ancient  and  modern 
Italy.  In  Latin  poetry  Virgil  was  its  last  and  greatest 
master ;  its  gradual  disuse  in  post-Virgilian  poetry,  like  its 
absence  in  the  earlier  hexameters  of  Cicero,  was  fatal  to  the 
music  of  the  verse,  and  with  its  reappearance  in  the  early 
Italian  poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages  that  music  once  more 
returns. 

It  was  in  his  later  years,  and  after  long  practice  in  many 
literary  forms,  that  Ennius  wrote  his  great  historical  epic, 
the  eighteen  books  of  Annales,  in  which  he  recorded  the 
legendary  and  actual  history  of  the  Roman  State  from  the 
arrival  of  Aeneas  in  Italy  down  to  the  events  of  his  own  day. 
The  way  here  had  been  shown  him  by  Naevius ;  but  in  the 
interval,  chiefly  owing  to  Ennius'  own  genius  and  industry, 
the  literary  capabilities  of  the  language  had  made  a  very 
great  advance.  It  is  uncertain  whether  Ennius  made 
any  attempt  to  develop  the  native  metres,  which  in  his  pre- 
decessor's work  were  still  rude  and  harsh ;  if  he  did,  he  must 
soon  have  abandoned  it.  Instead,  he  threw  himself  on  the 
task  of  moulding  the  Latin  language  to  the  movement  of 
the  splendid  Greek  hexameter  ;  his  success  in  the  enterprise 
•was  so  conclusive  that  the  question  between  the  two  forms 
was  never  again  raised.  The  Annales  at  once  became  a 
classic ;  until  dislodged  by  the  Aeneidt  they  remained  the 


IO  Latin  Literature.  [1 

foremost  and  representative  Roman  poem,  and  even  in  the 
centuries  which  followed,  they  continued  to  be  read  and 
admired,  and  their  claim  to  the  first  eminence  was  still 
supported  by  many  partisans.  The  sane  and  lucid  judgment 
of  Quintilian  recalls  them  to  their  true  place  ;  in  a  felicitous 
simile  he  compares  them  to  some  sacred  grove  of  aged  oaks, 
which  strikes  the  senses  with  a  solemn  awe  rather  than  with 
the  charm  of  beauty.  Cicero,  who  again  and  again  speaks 
of  Ennius  in  terms  of  the  highest  praise,  admits  that  defect 
of  finish  on  which  the  Augustan  poets  lay  strong  but  not 
unjustified  stress.  The  noble  tribute  of  Lucretius,  "  as  our 
Ennius  sang  in  immortal  verse,  he  who  first  brought  down 
from  lovely  Helicon  a  garland  of  evergreen  leaf  to  sound 
and  shine  throughout  the  nations  of  Italy,"  was  no  less  than 
due  from  a  poet  who  owed  so  much  to  Ennius  in  manner 
and  versification. 

It  is  not  known  when  the  Annales  were  lost ;  there  are 
doubtful  indications  of  their  existence  in  the  earlier  Middle 
Ages.  The  extant  fragments,  though  they  amount  only  to 
a  few  hundred  lines,  are  sufficient  to  give  a  clear  idea  of  the 
poet's  style  and  versification,  and  of  the  remarkable  breadth 
and  sagacity  which  made  the  poem  a  storehouse  of  civil 
wisdom  for  the  more  cultured  members  of  the  ruling  classes 
at  Rome,  no  less  than  a  treasury  of  rhythm  and  phrase  for 
the  poets.  In  the  famous  single  lines  like  — 

Non  cauponantes  bettum  sed  belligerantes, 
or  — 

Quern  nemo  ferro  potuit  superarc  nee  aurot 
or  — 

Hie  vir  haud  magna  cum  re  sed  pie  nu1  fidei, 
or  the  great  — 

Moribus  antiquis  res  stat  Romano,  virisque 

Ennius  expressed,  with  even  greater  point  and  weight 
than  Virgil  himself,  the  haughty  virtue,  the  keen  and 


I.]  Pacuviu*.  n 

narrow  political  instinct,  by  which  the  small  and  struggling 
mid- Italian  town  grew  to  be  arbitress  of  the  world ;  not 
Lucretius  with  his  vast  and  melancholy  outlook  over  a 
world  where  patriotism  did  not  exist  for  the  philosopher, 
not  Virgil  with  his  deep  and  charmed  broodings  over  the 
mystery  and  beauty  of  life  and  death,  struck  the  Roman 
note  so  exclusively  and  so  certainly. 

The  success  of  the  Latin  epic  in  Ennius'  hands  was 
indeed  for  the  period  so  complete  that  it  left  no  room  for 
further  development ;  for  the  next  hundred  years  the  Annales 
remained  not  only  the  unique,  but  the  satisfying  achievement 
in  this  kind  of  poetry,  and  it  was  only  when  a  new  wave  of 
Greek  influence  had  brought  with  it  a  higher  and  more 
refined  standard  of  literary  culture,  that  fresh  progress  could 
be  attained  or  desired.  It  was  not  so  with  tragedy.  So 
long  as  the  stage  demanded  fresh  material,  it  continued  to 
be  supplied,  and  the  supply  only  ceased  when,  as  had 
happened  even  in  Greece,  the  acted  drama  dwindled  away 
before  the  gaudier  methods  of  the  music-hall.  Marcus 
Pacuvius,  the  nephew  of  Ennius,  wrote  plays  for  the  thirty 
years  after  his  uncle's  death,  which  had  an  even  greater 
vogue ;  he  is  placed  by  Cicero  at  the  head  of  Roman 
tragedians.  The  plays  have  all  perished,  and  even  the 
fragments  are  lamentably  few ;  we  can  still  trace  in  them, 
however,  the  copiousness  of  fancy  and  richness  of  phrase 
which  was  marked  as  his  distinctive  quality  by  the  great 
critic  Varro.  Only  one  Roman  play  (on  Lucius  Aemilius 
Paulus,  the  conqueror  of  Pydna  *)  is  mentioned  among  his 
pieces ;  and  this,  though  perhaps  accidental,  may  indicate 
that  tragedy  had  not  really  pushed  its  roots  deep  enough 
at  Rome,  and  was  destined  to  an  early  decay.  Inexhaustible 
as  is  the  life  and  beauty  of  the  old  Greek  mythology,  it  was 

*  One  of  the  great  speeches  in  this  play  was  probably  made  use  of 
by  Livy  in  his  account  of  the  address  of  Paulus  to  the  people  after  his 
triumph  in  167  B.C.,  which  has  again  been  turned  into  noble  tragic 
verse  by  Fitzgerald,  Literary  Remains,  vol.  ii.  p.  483. 


12  Latin  Literature.  [1. 

impossible  that  a  Roman  audience  should  be  content  to 
listen  for  age  after  age  to  the  stories  of  Atalanta  and 
Antiope,  Pentheus  and  Orestes,  while  they  had  a  new 
national  life  and  overwhelming  native  interests  of  their 
own.  The  Greek  tragedy  tended  more  and  more  to 
become  the  merely  literary  survival  that  it  was  in  France 
under  Louis  Quatorze,  that  it  has  been  in  our  own  day 
in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Arnold  or  Mr.  Swinburne.  But  one 
more  poet  of  remarkable  genius  carries  on  its  history  into 
the  next  age. 

Lucius  Accius  of  Pisaurum  produced  one  of  his  early 
plays  in  the  year  140  B.C.,  on  the  same  occasion  when  one 
of  his  latest  was  produced  by  Pacuvius,  then  an  old  man  of 
eighty.  Accius  reached  a  like  age  himself;  Cicero  as  a 
young  man  knew  him  well,  and  used  to  relate  incidents  of 
the  aged  poet's  earlier  life  which  he  had  heard  from  his  own 
lips.  For  the  greater  part  of  the  fifty  years  which  include 
Sulla  and  the  Gracchi,  Accius  was  the  recognised  literary 
master  at  Rome,  president  of  the  college  of  poets  which 
held  its  meetings  in  the  temple  of  Minerva  on  the  Aventine, 
and  associating  on  terms  of  full  equality  with  the  most 
distinguished  statesman.  A  doubtful  tradition  mentions 
him  as  having  also  written  an  epic,  or  at  least  a  narrative 
poem,  called  Annales,  like  that  of  Ennius ;  but  this  in  all 
likelihood  is  a  distorted  reflection  of  the  fact  that  he 
handed  down  and  developed  the  great  literary  tradition  left 
by  his  predecessor.  The  volume  of  his  dramatic  work  was 
very  great ;  the  titles  are  preserved  of  no  less  than  forty-five 
tragedies.  In  general  estimation  he  brought  Roman  tragedy 
to  its  highest  point.  The  fragments  show  a  grace  and 
fancy  which  we  can  hardly  trace  in  the  earlier  tragedians. 

Accius  was  the  last,  as  he  seems  to  have  been  the 
greatest,  of  his  race.  Tragedy  indeed  continued,  as  we 
shall  see,  to  be  written  and  even  to  be  acted.  The  literary 
men  of  the  Ciceronian  and  Augustan  age  published  their 
plays  as  a  matter  of  course ;  Varius  was  coupled  by  his 


i.]  Decay  of  Tragedy.  13 

contemporaries  with  Virgil  and  Horace  ;  and  the  lost  Medea 
of  Ovid,  like  the  never-finished  Ajax  of  Augustus,  would  be 
at  the  least  a  highly  interesting  literary  document.  But  the 
new  age  found  fresh  poetical  forms  into  which  it  could  put 
its  best  thought  and  art ;  while  a  blow  was  struck  directly 
at  the  roots  of  tragedy  by  the  new  invention,  in  the  hands 
of  Cicero  and  his  contemporaries,  of  a  grave,  impassioned, 
and  stately  prose. 


n. 

COMEDY:  PLAUTUS  AND  TERENCE. 

GREAT  as  was  the  place  occupied  in  the  culture  of  the 
Greek  world  by  Homer  and  the  Attic  tragedians,  the 
Middle  and  New  Comedy,  as  they  culminated  in  Menander, 
exercised  an  even  wider  and  more  pervasive  influence. 
A  vast  gap  lay  between  the  third  and  fifth  centuries  before 
Christ.  Aeschylus,  and  even  Sophocles,  had  become  ancient 
literature  in  the  age  immediately  following  their  own. 
Euripides,  indeed,  continued  for  centuries  after  his  death 
to  be  a  vital  force  of  immense  moment ;  but  this  force  he 
owed  to  the  qualities  in  him  that  make  his  tragedy  transgress 
the  formal  limits  of  the  art,  to  pass  into  the  wider  sphere  of 
Ihe  human  comedy,  with  its  tears  and  laughter,  its  sentiment 
and  passions.  From  him  to  Menander  is  in  truth  but  a 
step ;  but  this  step  was  of  such  importance  that  it  was  the 
comedian  who  became  the  Shakespeare  of  Greece.  Omnem 
vitae  imaginem  expressit  are  the  words  deliberately  used  of 
him  by  the  greatest  of  Roman  critics. 

When,  therefore,  the  impulse  towards  a  national  literature 
began  to  be  felt  at  Rome,  comedy  took  its  place  side  by 
side  with  tragedy  and  epic  as  part  of  the  Greek  secret  that 
had  to  be  studied  and  mastered ;  and  this  came  the  more 
naturally  that  a  sort  of  comedy  in  rude  but  definite  forms 
was  already  native  and  familiar.  Dramatic  improvisations 
were,  from  an  immemorial  antiquity,  a  regular  feature  of 

14 


II.]  Origins  of  Comedy.  15 

Italian  festivals.  They  were  classed  under  different  heads, 
which  cannot  be  sharply  distinguished.  The  Satura  seems 
to  have  been  peculiarly  Latin ;  probably  it  did  not  differ 
deeply  or  essentially  from  the  two  other  leading  types  thaf 
arose  north  and  south  of  Latium,  and  were  named  from  the 
little  country  towns  of  Fescennium  in  Etruria,  and  Atella 
in  Campania.  But  these  rude  performances  hardly  rose 
to  the  rank  of  literature ;  and  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  first 
literary  standard  was  set  by  laborious  translations  from  the 
Greek. 

We  find,  accordingly,  that  the  earlier  masters — Andronicus, 
Naevius,  Ennius  —  all  wrote  comedies  as  well  as  tragedies, 
of  the  type  known  as  pattiata,  or  "  dressed  in  the  Greek 
mantle,"  that  is  to  say,  freely  translated  or  adapted  from 
Greek  originals.  After  Ennius,  this  still  continued  to  be  the 
more  usual  type;  but  the  development  of  technical  skill 
now  results  in  two  important  changes.  The  writers  of 
comedy  become,  on  the  whole  and  broadly  speaking, 
distinct  from  the  writers  of  tragedy;  and  alongside  of  the 
palliata  springs  up  the  togata,  or  comedy  of  Italian  dress, 
persons,  and  manners. 

As  this  latter  form  of  Latin  comedy  has  perished,  with 
the  exception  of  trifling  fragments,  it  may  be  dismissed  here 
in  few  words.  Its  life  was  comprised  in  less  than  a  century. 
Titinius,  the  first  of  the  writers  of  \hzfabula  togata  of  whom 
we  have  any  certain  information,  was  a  contemporary 
of  Terence  and  the  younger  Scipio ;  a  string  of  names, 
which  are  names  and  nothing  more,  carries  us  down  to 
the  latest  and  most  celebrated  of  the  list,  Lucius  Afranius. 
His  middle-class  comedies  achieved  a  large  and  a  long- 
continued  popularity;  we  hear  of  performances  of  them 
being  given  even  a  hundred  years  after  his  death,  and 
Horace  speaks  with  gentle  sarcasm  of  the  enthusiasts  who 
put  him  on  a  level  with  Menander.  With  his  contemporary 
Quinctius  Atta  (who  died  B.C.  77,  in  the  year  of  the  abortive 
revolution  after  the  death  of  Sulla),  he  owed  much  of  his 


16  Latin  Literature.  [L 

success  to  the  admirable  acting  of  Roscius,  who  created  a 
stage  tradition  that  lasted  long  after  his  own  time.  To 
the  mass  of  the  people,  comedy  (though  it  did  not  err  in 
the  direction  of  over-refinement)  seemed  tame  by  com- 
parison with  the  shows  and  pageants  showered  on  them 
by  the  ruling  class  as  the  price  of  their  suffrages.  As  in 
other  ages  and  countries,  fashionable  society  followed  the 
mob.  The  young  man  about  town,  so  familiar  to  us  from 
the  brilliant  sketches  of  Ovid,  accompanies  his  mistress,  not 
to  comedies  of  manners,  but  to  the  more  exciting  spectacles 
of  flesh  and  blood  offered  by  the  ballet-dancers  and  the 
gladiators.  Thus  the  small  class  who  occupied  themselves 
with  literature  had  little  counteracting  influence  pressed  on 
them  to  keep  them  from  the  fatal  habit  of  perpetually 
copying  from  the  Greek ;  and  adaptations  from  the  Attic 
New  Comedy,  which  had  been  inevitable  and  proper  enough 
as  the  earlier  essays  of  a  tentative  dramatic  art,  remained 
the  staple  of  an  art  which  thus  cut  itself  definitely  away 
from  nature. 

That  we  possess,  in  a  fairly  complete  form,  the  works  of 
two  of  the  most  celebrated  of  these  playwrights,  and  of  their 
many  contemporaries  and  successors  nothing  but  trifling 
fragments,  is  due  to  a  chance  or  a  series  of  chances  which 
we  cannot  follow,  and  from  which  we  must  not  draw  too 
precise  conclusions.  Plautus  was  the  earliest,  and  apparently 
the  most  voluminous,  of  the  writers  who  devoted  themselves 
wholly  to  comedy.  Between  him  and  Terence  a  generation 
intervenes,  filled  by  another  comedian,  Caecilius,  whose 
works  were  said  to  unite  much  of  the  special  excellences 
of  both  ;  while  after  the  death  of  Terence  his  work  was 
continued  on  the  same  lines  by  Turpilius  and  others,  and 
dwindled  away  little  by  little  into  the  early  Empire.  But 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Plautus  and  Terence  fully 
represent  the  strength  and  weakness  of  the  Latin  palliata. 
Together  with  the  eleven  plays  of  Aristophanes,  they  have 
been  in  fact,  since  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the 


II.]  Plautus.  I/ 

sole   representatives   of  ancient,  and   the   sole   models   of 
modern  comedy. 

Titus  Maccius  Plautus  was  born  of  poor  parents,  in  the 
little  Umbrian  town  of  Sarsina,  in  the  year  254  B.C.,  thus 
falling  midway  in  age  between  Naevius  and  Ennius.  Some- 
how or  other  he  drifted  to  the  capital,  to  find  employment 
as  a  stage-carpenter.  He  alternated  his  playwriting  with 
the  hardest  manual  drudgery  ;  and  though  the  inexhaustible 
animal  spirits  which  show  themselves  in  his  writing  explain 
how  he  was  able  to  combine  extraordinary  literary  fertility 
with  a  life  of  difficulty  and  poverty,  it  must  remain  a  mystery 
how  and  when  he  picked  up  his  education,  and  his  surprising 
mastery  of  the  Latin  language  both  in  metre  and  diction. 
Of  the  one  hundred  and  thirty  comedies  attributed  to  him, 
two-thirds  were  rejected  as  spurious  by  Varro,  and  only 
twenty-one  ranked  as  certainly  genuine.  These  last  are 
extant,  with  the  exception  of  one,  called  The  Carpet-Bag, 
which  was  lost  in  the  Middle  Ages  ;  some  of  them,  however, 
exist,  and  probably  existed  in  Varro's  time,  only  in  abridged 
or  mutilated  stage  copies. 

The  constructive  power  shown  in  these  pieces  is,  of  course, 
less  that  of  Plautus  himself  than  of  his  Greek  originals, 
Philemon,  Diphilus,  and  Menander.  But  we  do  not  want 
modern  instances  to  assure  us  that,  in  adapting  a  play  from 
one  language  to  another,  merely  to  keep  the  plot  unimpaired 
implies  more  than  ordinary  qualities  of  skill  or  conscientious- 
ness. When  Plautus  is  at  his  best  —  in  the  Aulularia 
Bacchides,  or  Rudens,  and  most  notably  in  the  Captivi  — 
he  has  seldom  been  improved  upon  either  in  the  interest 
of  his  action  or  in  the  copiousness  and  vivacity  of  his 
dialogue. 

Over  and  above  his  easy  mastery  of  language,  Plautus 
has  a  further  claim  to  distinction  in  the  wide  range  of  his 
manner.  Whether  he  ever  went  beyond  the  New  Comedy 
of  Athens  for  his  originals,  is  uncertain ;  but  within  it  he 
ranges  freely  over  the  whole  field,  and  the  twenty  extant 
c 


1 8  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

plays  include  specimens  of  almost  every  kind  of  play  to 
which  the  name  of  comedy  can  be  extended.  The  first 
on  the  list,  the  famous  Amphitruo,  is  the  only  surviving 
specimen  of  the  burlesque.  The  Greeks  called  this  kind  of 
piece  i\apor/3ayo>8ia  —  a  term  for  which  tragedie-bouffe  would 
be  the  nearest  modern  equivalent ;  tragico-comoedia  is  the 
name  by  which  Plautus  himself  describes  it  in  the  prologue. 
The  Amphitruo  remains,  even  now,  one  of  the  most  masterly 
specimens  of  this  kind.  The  version  of  Moliere,  in  which 
he  did  little  by  way  of  improvement  on  his  original,  has 
given  it  fresh  currency  as  a  classic ;  but  the  French  play 
gives  but  an  imperfect  idea  of  the  spirit  and  flexibility  of 
the  dialogue  in  Plautus'  hands. 

Of  a  very  different  type  is  the  piece  which  comes  next  the 
Amphrituo  in  acknowledged  excellence,  the  Captivi.  It  is 
a  comedy  of  sentiment,  without  female  characters,  and 
therefore  without  the  coarseness  which  (as  one  is  forced  to 
say  with  regret)  disfigures  some  of  the  other  plays.  The 
development  of  the  plot  has  won  high  praise  from  all  critics, 
and  justifies  the  boast  of  the  epilogue,  Huiusmodi  paucas 
poetae  reperiunt  comoedias.  But  the  praise  which  the  author 
gives  to  his  own  piece  — 

Non  pertractate  facto,  est  neque  item  ut  ceterae, 
Neque  spurcidici  insunt  versus  immemorabiks, 
Hie  neque  periurus  leno  est  nee  meretrix  mala 
Neque  miles  gloriosus  — 

is  really  a  severe  condemnation  of  two  other  groups  of 
Plautine  plays.  The  Casina  and  the  Truculentus  (the 
latter,  as  we  know  from  Cicero,  a  special  favourite  with  its 
author)  are  studies  in  pornography  which  only  the  unflagging 
animal  spirits  of  the  poet  can  redeem  from  being  disgust- 
ing ;  and  the  Asinaria,  Curculio,  and  Miles  Gloriosus  are 
broad  farces  with  the  thinnest  thread  of  plot.  The  last 
depends  wholly  on  the  somewhat  forced  and  exaggerated 
character  of  the  title-role ;  as  the  Pseudolus,  a  piece  with 


fl.]  Plautus.  19 

rather  more  substance,  does  mainly  on  its  periurus  leno, 
Ballio,  a  character  who  reminds  one  of  Falstaff  in  his  entire 
shamelessness  and  inexhaustible  vocabulary. 

A  different  vein,  the  domestic  comedy  of  middle-class 
life,  is  opened  in  one  of  the  most  quietly  successful  of 
his  pieces,  the  Trinumrnus,  or  Threepenny- bit.  In  spite  of 
all  the  characters  being  rather  fatiguingly  virtuous  in  their 
sentiments,  it  is  full  of  liveliness,  and  not  without  graceful- 
ness and  charm.  After  the  riotous  scenes  of  the  lighter 
plays,  it  is  something  of  a  comfort  to  return  to  the  good 
sense  and  good  feeling  of  respectable  people.  It  forms  an 
interesting  contrast  to  the  Bacchides,  a  play  which  returns 
to  the  world  of  the  bawd  and  harlot,  but  with  a  brilliance 
of  intrigue  and  execution  that  makes  it  rank  high  among 
comedies. 

Two  other  plays  are  remarkable  from  the  fact  that, 
though  neither  in  construction  nor  in  workmanship  do  they 
rise  beyond  mediocrity,  the  leading  motive  of  the  plot  in 
one  case  and  the  principal  character  in  the  other  are  in- 
ventions of  unusual  felicity.  The  Greek  original  of  both 
is  unknown;  but  to  it,  no  doubt,  rather  than  to  Plautus 
himself,  we  are  bound  to  ascribe  the  credit  of  the  Aulularia 
and  Menaechmi,  The  Aulularia,  or  Pot  of  Gold,  a  common- 
place story  of  middle-class  life,  is  a  mere  framework  for  the 
portrait  of  the  old  miser,  Euclio  —  in  itself  a  sketch  full  of 
life  and  brilliance,  and  still  more  famous  as  the  original 
of  Moliere's  Harpagon,  which  is  closely  studied  from  it. 
The  Menaechmi,  or  Comedy  of  Errors,  without  any  great 
ingenuity  of  plot  or  distinction  of  character,  rests  securely 
on  the  inexhaustible  opportunities  of  humour  opened  up 
by  the  happy  invention  of  the  twin-brothers  who  had  lost 
sight  of  one  another  from  early  childhood,  and  the  con- 
fusions that  arise  when  they  both  find  themselves  in  the 
same  town. 

There  is  yet  one  more  of  the  Plautine  comedies  which 
deserves  special  notice,  as  conceived  in  a  different  vein 


2O  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

and  worked  out  in  a  different  tone  from  all  those  already 
mentioned  —  the  charming  romantic  comedy  called  Rudem, 
or  The  Cable,  though  a  more  fitting  name  for  it  would  be 
The  Tempest.  Though  not  pitched  in  the  sentimental  key 
of  the  Captivi,  it  has  a  higher,  and,  in  Latin  literature, 
a  rarer,  note.  By  a  happy  chance,  perhaps,  rather  than 
from  any  unwonted  effort  of  skill,  this  translation  of  the 
play  of  Diphilus  has  brought  with  it  something  of  the  unique 
and  unmistakeable  Greek  atmosphere  —  the  atmosphere  of 
the  Odyssey,  of  the  fisher-idyl  of  Theocritus,  of  the  hundreds 
of  little  poems  in  the  Greek  Anthology  that  bear  clinging 
about  their  verses  the  faint  murmur  and  odour  of  the  sea. 
The  scene  is  laid  near  Cyrene,  on  the  strange  rich  African 
coast;  the  prologue  is  spoken,  not  by  a  character  in  the 
piece,  nor  by  a  decently  clothed  abstraction  like  the  figures 
of  Luxury  and  Poverty  which  speak  the  prologue  of  the 
Trinummus,  but  by  the  star  Arcturus,  watcher  and  tempest- 
bearer. 

Qui  gentes  omnes,  mariaque  et  terras  movet, 
Eius  sum  civis  civitate  caelitum; 
Ita  sum  ut  videtis,  splendens  stella  Candida, 
Signum  quod  semper  tempore  exoritur  suo 
Hie  atque  in  caelo  ;  nomen  Arcturo  est  mihi. 
Noctu  sum  in  caelo  clarus  atque  inter  deos  ; 
Inter  mortales  ambulo  interdius. 

The  romantic  note  struck  in  these  opening  lines  is  con- 
tinued throughout  the  comedy,  in  which,  by  little  touches 
here  and  there,  the  scene  is  kept  constantly  before  us  ot 
the  rocky  shore  in  the  strong  brilliant  sun  after  the  storm 
of  the  night,  the  temple  with  its  kindly  priestess,  and  the 
red-tiled  country-house  by  the  reeds  of  the  lagoon,  with  the 
solitary  pastures  behind  it  dotted  over  with  fennel.  Now 
and  again  one  is  reminded  of  the  Winter's  Tale,  with  fisher- 
men instead  of  shepherds  for  the  subordinate  characters; 


II.]  Plaittus.  21 

more  frequently  of  a  play  which,  indeed,  has  borrowed  a 
good  deal  from  this,  Pericles  Prince  of  Tyre. 

The  remainder  of  the  Plautine  plays  may  be  dismissed 
with  scant  notice.  They  comprise  three  variations  on  the 
theme  which,  to  modern  taste,  has  become  so  excessively 
tedious,  of  the  Fourberies  de  Scapin  —  the  Epidicus,  Mostel- 
laria,  and  Persa;  the  Poenulus,  a  dull  play,  which  owes  its 
only  interest  to  the  passages  in  it  written  in  the  Carthaginian 
language,  which  offer  a  tempting  field  for  the  conjectures 
of  the  philologist ;  two  more,  the  Mercator  and  Stichus,  of 
confused  plot  and  insipid  dialogue ;  and  a  mutilated  frag- 
ment of  the  Cistellaria,  or  Travelling-Trunk,  which  would 
not  have  been  missed  had  it  shared  the  fate  of  the  Carpet- 
Bag. 

The  humour  of  one  age  is  often  mere  weariness  to  the 
next ;  and  farcical  comedy  is,  of  all  the  forms  of  literature, 
perhaps  the  least  adapted  for  permanence.  It  would  be 
affectation  to  claim  that  Plautus  is  nowadays  widely  read 
outside  of  the  inner  circle  of  scholars ;  and  there  he  is  read 
almost  wholly  on  account  of  his  unusual  fertility  and  interest 
as  a  field  of  linguistic  study.  Yet  he  must  always  remain 
one  of  the  great  outstanding  influences  in  literary  history. 
The  strange  fate  which  has  left  nothing  but  inconsiderable 
fragments  out  of  the  immense  volume  of  the  later  Athenian 
Comedy,  raised  Plautus  to  a  position  co-ordinate  with  that 
of  Aristophanes  as  a  model  for  the  reviving  literature  of 
modern  Europe ;  for  such  part  of  that  literature  (by  much 
the  more  important)  as  did  not  go  beyond  Latin  for  its 
inspiration,  Plautus  was  a  source  of  unique  and  capital 
value,  in  his  own  branch  of  literature  equivalent  to  Cicero 
or  Virgil  in  theirs. 

Plautus  outlived  the  second  Punic  War,  during  which, 
as  we  gather  from  prefaces  and  allusions,  a  number  of  the 
extant  plays  were  produced.  Soon  after  the  final  collapse 
of  the  Carthaginian  power  at  Zama,  a  child  was  born 
at  Carthage,  who,  a  few  years  later,  in  the  course  of 


22  Latin  Literature.  [1 

unexplained  vicissitudes,  reached  Rome  as  a  boy-slave,  and 
passed  there  into  the  possession  of  a  rich  and  educated 
senator,  Terentius  Lucanus.  The  boy  showed  some  un- 
usual turn  for  books ;  he  was  educated  and  manumitted 
by  his  master,  and  took  from  him  the  name  of  Publius 
Terentius  the  African.  A  small  literary  circle  of  the  Roman 
aristocracy  —  men  too  high  in  rank  to  need  to  be  careful 
what  company  they  kept  —  admitted  young  Terence  to  their 
intimate  companionship  ;  and  soon  he  was  widely  known  as 
making  a  third  in  the  friendship  of  Gaius  Ladius  with  the 
first  citizen  of  the  Republic,  the  younger  Scipio  Africanus. 
This  society,  an  informal  academy  of  letters,  devoted  all  its 
energies  to  the  purification  and  improvement  of  the  Latin 
language.  The  rough  drafts  of  the  Terentian  comedies  were 
read  out  to  them,  and  the  language  and  style  criticised  in 
minute  detail ;  gossip  even  said  that  they  were  largely  written 
by  Scipio's  own  hand,  and  Terence  himself,  as  is  not  sur- 
prising, never  took  pains  to  deny  the  rumour.  Six  plays 
had  been  subjected  to  this  elaborate  correction  and  pro- 
duced on  the  Roman  stage,  when  Terence  undertook  a 
prolonged  visit  to  Greece  for  the  purpose  of  further  study. 
He  died  of  fever  the  next  year — by  one  account,  at  a  village 
in  Arcadia;  by  another,  when  on  his  voyage  home.  The 
six  comedies  had  already  taken  the  place  which  they  have 
ever  since  retained  as  Latin  classics. 

The  Terentian  comedy  is  in  a  way  the  turning-point  of 
Roman  literature.  Plautus  and  Ennius,  however  largely 
they  drew  from  Greek  originals,  threw  into  all  their  work 
a  manner  and  a  spirit  which  were  essentially  those  of  a 
new  literature  in  the  full  tide  of  growth.  The  imitation  of 
Greek  models  was  a  means,  not  an  end ;  in  both  poets  the 
Greek  manner  is  continually  abandoned  for  essays  into  a 
new  manner  of  their  own,  and  they  relapse  upon  it  when 
their  imperfectly  mastered  powers  of  invention  or  expres- 
sion give  way  under  them.  In  the  circle  of  Terence  the 
fatal  doctrine  was  originated  that  the  Greek  manner  was 


II.]  Terence.  23 

an  end  in  itself,  and  that  the  road  to  perfection  lay,  not  in 
developing  any  original  qualities,  but  in  reproducing  with 
laborious  fidelity  the  accents  of  another  language  and 
civilisation.  Nature  took  a  swift  and  certain  revenge. 
Correctness  of  sentiment  and  smooth  elegance  of  diction 
became  the  standards  of  excellence ;  and  Latin  literature, 
still  mainly  confined  to  the  governing  class  and  their 
dependents,  was  struck  at  the  root  (the  word  is  used  of 
Terence  himself  by  Varro)  with  the  fatal  disease  of 
mediocrity. 

But  in  Terence  himself  (as  in  Addison  among  English 
writers)  this  mediocrity  is,  indeed,  golden  —  a  mediocrity 
full  of  grace  and  charm.  The  unruffled  smoothness  of 
diction,  the  exquisite  purity  of  language,  are  qualities 
admirable  in  themselves,  and  are  accompanied  by  other 
striking  merits  ;  not,  indeed,  by  dramatic  force  or  construc- 
tive power,  but  by  careful  and  delicate  portraiture  of 
character,  and  by  an  urbanity  (to  use  a  Latin  word  which 
expresses  a  peculiarly  Latin  quality)  to  which  the  world 
owes  a  deep  debt  for  having  set  a  fashion.  In  some  curious 
lines  preserved  by  Suetonius,  Julius  Caesar  expresses  a 
criticism,  which  we  shall  find  it  hard  to  improve,  on  the 
"halved  Menander,"  to  whom  his  own  fastidious  purity 
in  the  use  of  language,  no  less  than  his  tact  and  courtesy 
as  a  man  of  the  world,  attracted  him  strongly,  while  not 
blinding  him  to  the  weakness  and  flaccidity  of  the  Terentian 
drama.  Its  effect  on  contemporary  men  of  letters  was 
immediate  and  irresistible.  A  story  is  told,  bearing  all 
the  marks  of  truth,  of  the  young  poet  when  he  submitted 
his  first  play,  The  Maid  of  Andros,  for  the  approval  of  the 
Commissioners  of  Public  Works,  who  were  responsible  for 
the  production  of  plays  at  the  civic  festivals.  He  was 
ordered  to  read  it  aloud  to  Caecilius,  who,  since  the  death 
of  Plautus,  had  been  supreme  without  a  rival  on  the  comic 
stage.  Terence  presented  himself  modestly  while  Caecilius 
was  at  supper,  and  was  carelessly  told  to  sit  down  on  a  stool 


24  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

in  the  dining-room,  and  begin.  He  had  not  read  beyond 
a  few  verses  when  Caecilius  stopped  him,  and  made  him 
take  a  seat  at  table.  After  supper  was  over,  he  heard 
his  guest's  play  out  with  unbounded  and  unqualified 
admiration. 

But  this  admiration  of  the  literary  class  did  not  make  the 
refined  conventional  art  of  Terence  successful  for  its  im- 
mediate purposes  on  the  stage :  he  was  caviare  to  the 
general.  Five  of  the  six  plays  were  produced  at  the 
spring  festival  of  the  Mother  of  the  Gods  —  an  occasion 
when  the  theatre  had  not  to  face  the  competition  of  the 
circus ;  yet  even  then  it  was  only  by  immense  efforts  on 
the  part  of  the  management  that  they  succeeded  in  attract- 
ing an  audience.  The  Mother-in-Law  (not,  it  is  true,  a  play 
which  shows  the  author  at  his  best)  was  twice  produced  as 
a  dead  failure.  The  third  time  it  was  pulled  through  by 
extraordinary  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  acting-manager, 
Ambivius  Turpio.  The  prologue  written  by  Terence  for 
this  third  performance  is  one  of  the  most  curious  literary 
documents  of  the  time.  He  is  too  angry  to  extenuate  the 
repeated  failure  of  his  play.  If  we  believe  him,  it  fell  dead 
the  first  time  because  "  that  fool,  the  public,"  were  all 
excitement  over  an  exhibition  on  the  tight-rope  which  was 
to  follow  the  play ;  at  the  second  representation  only  one 
act  had  been  gone  through,  when  a  rumour  spread  that 
"  there  were  going  to  be  gladiators  "  elsewhere,  and  in  five 
minutes  the  theatre  was  empty. 

The  Terentian  prologues  (they  are  attached  to  all  his 
plays)  are  indeed  all  very  interesting  from  the  light  they 
throw  on  the  character  of  the  author,  as  well  as  on  the  ideas 
and  fashions  of  his  age.  In  all  of  them  there  is  a  certain 
hard  and  acrid  purism  that  cloaks  in  modest  phrases  an 
immense  contempt  for  all  that  lies  beyond  the  writer's  own 
canons  of  taste.  In  hac  est  pura  oratio,  a  phrase  of  the 
prologue  to  The  Self-Tormentor,  is  the  implied  burden  of 
them  all.  He  is  a  sort  of  literary  Robespierre  ;  one  seems 


II.]  Terence.  25 

to  catch  the  premonitory  echo  of  well-known  phrases, 
"  degenerate  condition  of  literary  spirit,  backsliding  on 
this  hand  and  on  that,  I,  Terence,  alone  left  incorruptible." 
Three  times  there  is  a  reference  to  Plautus,  and  always 
with  a  tone  of  chilly  superiority  which  is  too  proud  to 
break  into  an  open  sneer.  Yet  among  these  haughty  and 
frigid  manifestoes  some  felicity  of  phrase  or  of  sentiment 
will  suddenly  remind  us  that  here,  after  all,  we  are  dealing 
with  one  of  the  great  formative  intelligences  of  literature ; 
where,  for  instance,  in  the  prologue  to  the  lively  and  witty 
comedy  of  The  Eunuch,  the  famous  line  — 

Nullumst  tarn  dictum  quod  non  dictum  sit  prius  — 

drops  with  the  same  easy  negligence  as  in  the  opening 
dialogue  of  The  Self-Tormentor,  the  immortal  — 

Homo  sum  :  hutnani  nihil  a  me  alienum  puto  — 

falls  from  the  lips  of  the  old  farmer.  Congreve  alone  of 
English  playwrights  has  this  glittering  smoothness,  this 
inimitable  ease ;  if  we  remember  what  Dryden,  in  language 
too  splendid  to  be  insincere,  wrote  of  his  young  friend,  we 
may  imagine,  perhaps,  how  Caecilius  and  his  circle  regarded 
Terence.  Nor  is  it  hard  to  believe  that,  had  Terence,  like 
Congreve,  lived  into  an  easy  and  honoured  old  age,  he 
would  still  have  rested  his  reputation  on  these  productions 
of  nis  early  youth.  Both  dramatists  had  from  the  first 
seen  clearly  and  precisely  what  they  had  in  view,  and  had 
almost  at  the  first  stroke  attained  it :  the  very  completeness 
of  the  success  must  in  both  cases  have  precluded  the  dis- 
satisfaction through  which  fresh  advances  could  alone  be 
possible. 

This,  too,  is  one  reason,  though  certainly  not  the  only 
one,  why,  with  the  death  of  Terence,  the  development  of 
Latin  comedy  at  once  ceased.  His  successors  are  mere 
shadowy  names.  Any  life  that  remained  in  the  art  took 


2tf  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

the  channel  of  the  farces  which,  for  a  hundred  years  more, 
retained  a  genuine  popularity,  but  which  never  took  rank 
as  literature  of  serious  value.  Even  this,  \hefabula  taber- 
naria,  or  comedy  of  low  life,  gradually  melted  away  before 
the  continuous  competition  of  the  shows  which  so  moved 
the  spleen  of  Terence  —  the  pantomimists,  the  jugglers,  the 
gladiators.  By  this  time,  too,  the  literary  instinct  was 
beginning  to  explore  fresh  channels.  Not  only  was  prose 
becoming  year  by  year  more  copious  and  flexible,  but  the 
mixed  mode,  fluctuating  between  prose  and  verse,  to  which 
the  Romans  gave  the  name  of  satire,  was  in  process  of 
invention.  Like  the  novel  as  compared  with  the  play  at 
the  present  time,  it  offered  great  and  obvious  advantages 
in  ease  and  variety  of  manipulation,  and  in  the  simplicity 
and  inexpensiveness  with  which,  not  depending  on  the 
stated  performances  of  a  public  theatre,  it  could  be  pro- 
duced and  circulated.  But  before  proceeding  to  consider 
this  new  literary  invention  more  fully,  it  will  be  well  to 
pause  in  order  to  gather  up,  as  its  necessary  complement, 
the  general  lines  on  which  Latin  prose  was  now  developing, 
whether  in  response  to  the  influence  of  Greek  models,  or 
in  the  course  of  a  more  native  and  independent  growth. 


m. 

EARLY  PROSE  :   THE   SA  TURA,  OR  MIXED   MODE. 

LAW  and  government  were  the  two  great  achievements  of 
the  Latin  race ;  and  the  two  fountain-heads  of  Latin  prose 
are,  on  the  one  hand,  the  texts  of  codes  and  the  commen- 
taries of  jurists  :  on  the  other,  the  annals  of  the  inner  con- 
stitution and  the  external  conquests  and  diplomacy  of 
Rome.  The  beginnings  of  both  went  further  back  than 
Latin  antiquaries  could  trace  them.  Out  of  the  mists  of 
a  legendary  antiquity  two  fixed  points  rise,  behind  which 
it  is  needless  or  impossible  to  go.  The  code  known  as 
that  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  of  which  large  fragments  survive 
in  later  law-books,  was  drawn  up,  according  to  the  accepted 
chronology,  in  the  year  450  B.C.  Sixty  years  later  the  sack 
of  Rome  by  the  Gauls  led  to  the  destruction  of  nearly  all 
public  and  private  records,  and  it  was  only  from  this  date 
onwards  that  such  permanent  and  contemporary  registers  — 
the  consular  fasti,  the  books  of  the  pontifical  college,  the 
public  collections  of  engraved  laws  and  treaties  —  were 
extant  as  could  afford  material  for  the  annalist.  That  a 
certain  amount  of  work  in  the  field  both  of  law  and  history 
must  have  been  going  on  at  Rome  from  a  very  early  period, 
is,  of  course,  obvious ;  but  it  was  not  till  the  time  of  the 
Punic  Wars  that  anything  was  produced  in  either  field  which 
could  very  well  be  classed  as  literature. 

In  history  as  in  poetry,  the  first  steps  were  timidly  made 
23 


28  Latin  Literature.  [I 

with  the  help  of  Greek  models.  The  oldest  and  most 
important  of  the  early  historians,  Quintus  Fabius  Pictor, 
the  contemporary  of  Naevius  and  Ennius,  actually  wrote  in 
Greek,  though  a  Latin  version  of  his  work  certainly  existed, 
whether  executed  by  himself  or  some  other  hand  is  doubtful, 
at  an  almost  contemporary  date.  Extracts  are  quoted  from 
it  by  the  grammarians  as  specimens  of  the  language  of  the 
period.  The  scope  of  his  history  was  broadly  the  same  as 
that  of  the  two  great  contemporary  poets.  It  was  a  narra- 
tive of  events  starting  from  the  legendary  landing  of  Aeneas 
in  Italy,  becoming  more  copious  as  it  advanced,  and  dealing 
with  the  events  of  the  author's  own  time  at  great  length 
and  from  abundant  actual  knowledge.  The  work  ended,  so 
far  as  can  be  judged,  with  the  close  of  the  second  Punic 
War.  It  long  remained  the  great  quarry  for  subsequent 
historians.  Polybius  undertook  his  own  great  work  from 
dissatisfaction  with  Pictor's  prejudice  and  inaccuracy ;  and 
he  is  one  of  the  chief  authorities  followed  in  the  earlier 
decads  of  Livy.  A  younger  contemporary  of  Pictor, 
Lucius  Cincius  Alimentus,  who  commanded  a  Roman  army 
in  the  war  against  Hannibal,  also  used  the  Greek  language 
in  his  annals  of  his  own  life  and  times,  and  the  same  ap- 
pears to  be  the  case  with  the  memoirs  of  other  soldiers 
and  statesmen  of  the  period.  It  is  only  half  a  century  later 
that  we  know  certainly  of  historians  who  wrote  in  Latin. 
The  earliest  of  them,  Lucius  Cassius  Hemina,  composed 
his  annals  in  the  period  between  the  death  of  Terence  and 
the  revolution  of  the  Gracchi ;  a  more  distinguished  suc- 
cessor, Lucius  Calpurnius  Piso  Frugi,  is  better  known  as 
one  of  the  leading  opponents  of  the  revolution  (he  was  con- 
sul in  the  year  of  the  tribuneship  of  Tiberius  Gracchus) 
than  as  the  author  of  annals  which  were  certainly  written 
with  candour  and  simplicity,  and  in  a  style  where  the  epi- 
thets "  artless  and  elegant,"  used  of  them  by  Aulus  Gellius, 
need  not  be  inconsistent  with  the  more  disparaging  word 
"  meagre, "  with  which  they  are  dismissed  by  Cicero. 


III.]  The  Early  Jurists.  29 

History  might  be  written  in  Greek  —  as,  indeed,  through- 
out the  Republican  and  Imperial  times  it  continued  to  be 
—  by  any  Roman  who  was  sufficiently  conversant  with  that 
language,  in  which  models  for  every  style  of  historical 
composition  were  ready  to  his  hand.  In  the  province  of 
jurisprudence  it  was  different.  Here  the  Latin  race  owed 
nothing  to  any  foreign  influence  or  example ;  and  the 
development  of  Roman  law  pursued  a  straightforward  and 
uninterrupted  course  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the  classical 
period,  and  after  Rome  itself  had  ceased  to  be  the  seat 
even  of  a  divided  empire.  The  earliest  juristic  writings, 
consisting  of  commentaries  on  collections  of  the  semi-reli- 
gious enactments  in  which  positive  law  began,  are  attributed 
to  the  period  of  the  Samnite  Wars,  long  before  Rome  had 
become  a  great  Mediterranean  power.  About  200  B.C. 
two  brothers,  Publius  and  Sextus  Aelius,  both  citizens  of 
consular  and  censorial  rank,  published  a  systematic  treatise 
called  Tripertita,  which  was  long  afterwards  held  in  re- 
verence as  containing  the  cunabula  iuris,  the  cradle  out 
of  which  the  vast  systems  of  later  ages  sprang.  Fifty  years 
later,  in  the  circle  of  the  younger  Scipio,  begins  the  illus- 
trious line  of  the  Mucii  Scaevolae.  Three  members  of  this 
family,  each  a  distinguished  jurist,  rose  to  the  consulate  in 
the  stormy  half-century  between  the  Gracchi  and  Sulla. 
The  last  and  greatest  of  the  three  represented  the  ideal 
Roman  more  nearly  than  any  other  citizen  of  his  time. 
The  most  eloquent  of  jurists  and  the  most  learned  of 
orators,  he  was  at  the  same  time  a  brilliant  administrator 
and  a  paragon  of  public  and  private  virtue ;  and  his  murder 
at  the  altar  of  Vesta,  in  the  Marian  proscription,  was  uni- 
versally thought  the  most  dreadful  event  of  an  age  of 
horrors.  His  voluminous  and  exhaustive  treatise  on  Civil 
Law  remained  a  text-book  for  centuries,  and  was  a  founda- 
tion for  the  writings  of  all  later  Roman  jurists. 

The  combination  of  jurisconsult  and  orator  in  the  younger 
Scaevola  was  somewhat  rare ;  from  an  early  period  the  two 


30  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

professions  of  jurist  and  pleader  were  sharply  distinguished, 
though  both  were  pathways  to  the  highest  civic  offices. 
Neither  his  father  nor  his  cousin  (the  other  two  of  the  triad) 
was  distinguished  in  oratory ;  nor  were  the  two  great 
contemporaries  of  the  former,  who  both  published  standard 
works  on  civil  law,  Manius  Manilius  and  Marcus  Junius 
Brutus.  The  highest  field  for  oratory  was,  of  course,  in 
the  political,  and  not  in  the  purely  legal,  sphere ;  and  the 
unique  Roman  constitution,  an  oligarchy  chosen  almost 
wholly  by  popular  suffrage,  made  the  practice  of  oratory 
more  or  less  of  a  necessity  to  every  politician.  Well- 
established  tradition  ascribed  to  the  greatest  statesman  of 
the  earlier  Republic,  Appius  Claudius  Caecus,  the  first 
institution  of  written  oratory.  His  famous  speech  in  the 
senate  against  peace  with  Pyrrhus  was  cherished  in  Cicero's 
time  as  one  of  the  most  precious  literary  treasures  of  Rome. 
From  his  time  downwards  the  stream  of  written  oratory 
flowed,  at  first  in  a  slender  stream,  which  gathered  to  a 
larger  volume  in  the  works  of  the  elder  Cato. 

In  the  history  of  the  half-century  following  the  war  with 
Hannibal,  Cato  is  certainly  the  most  striking  single  figure. 
It  is  only  as  a  man  of  letters  that  he  has  to  be  noticed  here ; 
and  the  character  of  a  man  of  letters  was,  perhaps,  the  last 
in  which  he  would  have  wished  to  be  remembered  or 
praised.  Yet  the  cynical  and  indomitable  old  man,  with 
his  rough  humour,  his  narrow  statesmanship,  his  obstinate 
ultra-conservatism,  not  only  produced  a  large  quantity  of 
writings,  but  founded  and  transmitted  to  posterity  a  distinct 
and  important  body  of  critical  dogma  and  literary  tradition. 
The  influence  of  Greece  had,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
begun  to  permeate  the  educated  classes  at  Rome  through 
and  through.  Against  this  Greek  influence,  alike  in  liter- 
ature and  in  manners,  Cato  struggled  all  his  life  with  the 
whole  force  of  his  powerful  intellect  and  mordant  wit ; 
yet  it  is  most  characteristic  of  the  man  that  in  his  old  age 
he  learned  Greek  himself,  and  read  deeply  in  the  master- 


III.]  Cato.  31 

pieces  of  that  Greek  literature  from  which  he  was  too 
honest  and  too  intelligent  to  be  able  to  withhold  his 
admiration.  While  much  of  contemporary  literature  was 
launching  itself  on  the  fatal  course  of  imitation  of  Greek 
models,  and  was  forcing  the  Latin  language  into  the 
trammels  of  alien  forms,  Cato  gave  it  a  powerful  impulse 
towards  a  purely  native,  if  a  somewhat  narrow  and  harsh 
development.  The  national  prose  literature,  of  which  he 
may  fairly  be  called  the  founder,  was  kept  up  till  the  decay 
of  Rome  by  a  large  and  powerful  minority  of  Latin  writers. 
What  results  it  might  have  produced,  if  allowed  unchecked 
scope,  can  only  be  matter  for  conjecture ;  in  the  main 
current  of  Latin  literature  the  Greek  influence  wa»,  on  the 
whole,  triumphant ;  Cato's  was  the  losing  side  (if  one  may 
so  adapt  the  famous  line  of  Lucan),  and  the  men  of  genius 
took  the  other. 

The  speeches  of  Cato,  of  which  upwards  of  a  hundred 
and  fifty  were  extant  in  Cicero's  time,  and  which  the 
virtuosi  of  the  age  of  Hadrian  preferred,  or  professed  to 
prefer,  to  Cicero's  own,  are  lost,  with  the  exception  of 
inconsiderable  fragments.  The  fragments  show  high  ora- 
torical gifts ;  shrewdness,  humour,  terse  vigour  and  con- 
trolled passion ;  "  somewhat  confused  and  harsh,"  says  a 
late  but  competent  Latin  critic,  "  but  strong  and  vivid  as 
it  is  possible  for  oratory  to  be."  We  have  suffered  a 
heavier  loss  in  his  seven  books  of  Origines,  the  work  of  his 
old  age.  This  may  broadly  be  called  an  historical  work, 
but  it  was  history  treated  in  a  style  of  great  latitude,  the 
meagre,  disconnected  method  of  the  annalists  alternating 
with  digressions  into  all  kinds  of  subjects  —  geography, 
ethnography,  reminiscences  of  his  own  travels  and  ex- 
periences, and  the  politics  and  social  life  of  his  own  and 
earlier  times.  It  made  no  attempt  to  keep  up  either  the 
dignity  or  the  continuity  of  history.  His  absence  of  method 
made  this  work,  however  full  of  interest,  the  despair  of 
later  historians  :  what  were  they  to  think,  they  plaintively 


32  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

asked,  of  an  author  who  dismissed  whole  campaigns  without 
even  giving  the  names  of  the  generals,  while  he  went  into 
profuse  detail  over  one  of  the  war-elephants  in  the  Car- 
thaginian army? 

The  only  work  of  Cato's  which  has  been  preserved  in  its 
integrity  is  that  variously  known  under  the  titles  De  Re 
Rustica  or  De  Agri  Cultura.  It  is  one  of  a  number  of  treatises 
of  a  severely  didactic  nature,  which  he  published  on  various 
subjects  —  agricultural,  sanitary,  military,  and  legal.  This 
treatise  was  primarily  written  for  a  friend  who  owned  and 
cultivated  farms  in  Campania.  It  consists  of  a  series  of 
terse  and  pointed  directions  following  one  on  another, 
with  no  attempt  at  style  or  literary  artifice,  but  full  of"  a 
hard  sagacity,  and  with  occasional  flashes  of  dry  humour, 
which  suggest  that  Cato  would  have  found  a  not  wholly 
uncongenial  spirit  in  President  Lincoln.  A  brief  extract 
from  one  of  the  earlier  chapters  is  not  without  interest, 
both  as  showing  the  practical  Latin  style,  and  as  giving  the 
prose  groundwork  of  Virgil's  stately  and  beautiful  embroidery 
in  the  Georgics. 

Opera  omnia  mature  conficias  face.  Nam  res  rustica  sic 
fst;  si  unam  rem  serofeceris,  omnia  opera  sero  fades.  Stra- 
mcnta  si  deerunt  frondem  iligneam  legito ;  earn  substernito 
ovibus  bubusque.  Sterquilinium  magnum  stude  ut  habeas. 
Stercus  sedulo  conserva,  cum  exportabis  spargito  et  commin- 
uito ;  per  autumnum  evehito.  Circum  oleas  autumnitate 
ablaqueato  et  stercus  addito.  Frondem  populneam,  ulmeam, 
querneam  caedito,  per  tempus  earn  condito,  non  peraridam, 
Pabulum  ovibus.  Item  foenum  cordum,  sicilamenta  de  prato  ; 
ea  arida  condito.  Post  imbrem  autumni  rapinam,  pabulum, 
lupinumque  serito. 

To  the  Virgilian  student,  every  sentence  here  is  full  of 
reminiscences. 

In  his  partial  yielding,  towards  the  end  of  a  long  and 
uncompromising  life,  to  the  rising  tide  of  Greek  influence, 
Cato  was  probably  moved  to  a  large  degree  by  his  personal 


III.]  The  Scipionic  Circle.  33 

admiration  for  the  younger  Scipio,  whom  he  hailed  as  the 
single  great  personality  among  younger  statesmen,  and  to 
whom  he  paid  (strangely  enough,  in  a  line  quoted  from 
Homer)  what  is  probably  the  most  splendid  compliment 
ever  paid  by  one  statesman  to  another.  Scipio  was  the 
centre  of  a  school  which  included  nearly  the  whole  literary 
impulse  of  his  time.  He  was  himself  a  distinguished  orator 
and  a  fine  scholar ;  after  the  conquest  of  Perseus,  the  royal 
library  was  the  share  of  the  spoils  of  Macedonia  which  he 
chose  for  himself,  and  bequeathed  to  his  family.  His 
celebrated  friend,  Gaius  Laelius,  known  in  Rome  as  "  the 
Wise,"  was  not  only  an  orator,  but  a  philosopher,  or  deeply 
read,  at  all  events,  in  the  philosophy  of  Greece.  Another 
member  of  the  circle,  Lucius  Furius  Philus,  initiated  that 
connection  of  Roman  law  with  the  Stoic  philosophy  which 
continued  ever  after  to  be  so  intimate  and  so  far-reaching. 
In  this  circle,  too,  Roman  history  began  to  be  written  in 
Latin.  Cassius  Hemina  and  Lucius  Calpurnius  Piso  have 
been  already  mentioned;  more  intimately  connected  with 
Scipio  are  Gaius  Fannius,  the  son-in-law  of  Laelius,  and 
Lucius  Caelius  Antipater,  who  reached,  both  in  lucid  and 
copious  diction  and  in  impartiality  and  research,  a  higher 
level  than  Roman  history  had  yet  attained.  Literary 
culture  became  part  of  the  ordinary  equipment  of  a  states- 
man ;  a  crowd  of  Greek  teachers,  foremost  among  them  the 
eminent  philosopher,  afterwards  Master  of  the  Portico, 
Panaetius  of  Rhodes,  spread  among  the  Roman  upper 
classes-  the  refining  and  illuminating  influence  of  Greek 
ideas  and  Attic  style. 

Meanwhile,  in  this  Scipionic  circle,  a  new  figure  had 
appeared  of  great  originality  and  force,  the  founder  of  a 
kind  of  literature  which,  with  justifiable  pride,  the  Romans 
claimed  as  wholly  native  and  original.  Gaius  Lucilius  was 
a  member  of  a  wealthy  equestrian  family,  and  thus  could 
associate  on  equal  terms  with  the  aristocracy,  while  he  was 
removed  from  the  necessity,  which  members  of  the  great 


34  Latin  Literature.  [I 

senatorian  houses  could  hardly  avoid,  of  giving  the  best 
of  their  time  and  strength  to  political  and  administrative 
duties.  After  Terence,  he  is  the  most  distinguished  and 
the  most  important  in  his  literary  influence  among  the 
friends  of  Scipio.  The  form  of  literature  which  he  invented 
and  popularised,  that  of  familiar  poetry,  was  one  which 
proved  singularly  suited  to  the  Latin  genius.  He  speaks 
of  his  own  works  under  the  name  of  Sermones,  "  talks  "  — 
a  name  which  was  retained  by  his  great  successor,  Horace ; 
but  the  peculiar  combination  of  metrical  form  with  wide 
range  of  subject  and  the  pedestrian  style  of  ordinary  prose, 
received  in  popular  usage  the  name  Satura,  or  "  mixture." 
The  word  had,  in  earlier  times,  been  used  of  the  irregu- 
lar stage  performances,  including  songs,  stories,  and  semi- 
dramatic  interludes,  which  formed  the  repertory  of  strolling 
artists  at  popular  festivals.  The  extension  of  the  name  to 
the  verse  of  Lucilius  indicates  that  written  literature  was 
now  rising  to  equal  importance  and  popularity  with  the 
spoken  word. 

Horace  comments,  not  without  severity,  on  the  profuse 
and  careless  production  of  Lucilius.  Of  the  thirty  books 
of  his  Satires,  few  fragments  of  any  length  survive ;  much, 
probably  the  greater  part  of  them,  would,  if  extant,  long 
have  lost  its  interest.  But  the  loss  of  the  bulk  of  his  work 
is  a  matter  of  sincere  regret,  because  it  undoubtedly  gave  a 
vivid  and  detailed  picture  of  the  social  life  and  the  current 
interests  of  the  time,  such  as  the  Satires  of  Horace  give  of 
Rome  in  the  Augustan  age.  His  criticisms  on  the.  public 
men  of  his  day  were  outspoken  and  unsparing  ;  nor  had  he 
more  reverence  for  established  reputations  in  poetry  than 
in  public  life.  A  great  deal  of  his  work  consisted  in  descrip- 
tions of  eating  and  drinking ;  much,  also,  in  lively  accounts 
of  his  own  travels  and  adventures,  or  those  of  his  friends. 
One  book  of  the  Satires  was  occupied  with  an  account  of 
Scipio's  famous  mission  to  the  East,  in  which  he  visited  the 
courts  of  Egypt  and  Asia,  attended  by  a  retinue  of  only 


III.]  Lucilius.  35 

five  servants,  but  armed  with  the  full  power  of  the  terrible 
Republic.  Another  imitated  by  Horace  in  his  story  of  the 
journey  to  Brundusium,  detailed  the  petty  adventures,  the 
talk  and  laughter  by  roads  and  at  inns,  of  an  excursion  of 
his  own  through  Campania  and  Bruttium  to  the  Sicilian 
straits.  Many  of  the  fragments  deal  with  the  literary  con- 
troversies of  the  time,  going  down  even  to  the  minutiae  of 
spelling  and  grammar;  many  more  show  the  beginnings 
of  that  translation  into  the  language  of  common  life  of  the 
precepts  of  the  Greek  schools,  which  was  consummated  for 
the  world  by  the  poets  and  prose-writers  of  the  following 
century.  But,  above  all,  the  Satires  of  Lucilius  were  in  the 
fullest  sense  of  the  word  an  autobiography.  The  famous 
description  of  Horace,  made  yet  more  famous  for  English 
readers  by  the  exquisite  aptness  with  which  Boswell  placed 
it  on  the  title-page  of  his  Life  of  Johnson  — 

Quo  fit  ut  omnis 

Votiva  pateat  veluti  descripta  tabella 
Vita  senis  — 

expresses  the  true  greatness  of  Lucilius.  He  invented  a 
literary  method  which,  without  being  great,  yields  to  no 
other  in  interest  and  even  in  charm,  and  which,  for  its  per- 
fection, requires  a  rare  and  refined  genius.  Not  Horace 
only,  nor  all  the  satirists  after  Horace,  but  Montaigne  and 
Pepys  also,  belong  to  the  school  of  Lucilius. 

Such  was  the  circle  of  the  younger  Scipio,  formed  in 
the  happy  years  —  as  they  seemed  to  the  backward  gaze  of 
the  succeeding  generation  —  between  the  establishment  of 
Roman  supremacy  at  the  battle  of  Pydna,  and  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  of  Tiberius  Gracchus.  Fifty  years  of 
stormy  turbulence  followed,  culminating  in  the  Social  War 
and  the  reign  of  terror  under  Marius  and  Cinna,  and  finally 
stilled  in  seas  of  blood  by  the  counter-revolution  of  Sulla. 
This  is  the  period  which  separates  the  Scipionic  from  the 


36  Latin  Literature.  [1. 

Ciceronian  age.  It  was  naturally,  except  in  the  single  pro- 
vince of  political  oratory,  not  one  of  great  literary  fertility  ; 
and  a  brief  indication  of  the  most  notable  authors  of  the 
period,  and  of  the  lines  on  which  Roman  literature  mainly 
continued  to  advance  during  it,  is  all  that  is  demanded  or 
possible  here. 

In  oratory,  this  period  by  general  consent  represented 
the  golden  age  of  Latin  achievement.  The  eloquence  of 
both  the  Gracchi  was  their  great  political  weapon ;  that  of 
Gaius  was  the  most  powerful  in  exciting  feeling  that  had 
ever  been  known ;  his  death  was  mourned,  even  by  fierce 
political  opponents,  as  a  heavy  loss  to  Latin  literature.  But 
in  the  next  generation,  the  literary  perfection  of  oratory 
was  carried  to  an  even  higher  point  by  Marcus  Antonius 
and  Lucius  Licinius  Crassus.  Both  attained  the  highest 
honours  that  the  Republic  had  to  bestow.  By  a  happy 
chance,  their  styles  were  exactly  complementary  to  one 
another ;  to  hear  both  in  one  day  was  the  highest  in- 
tellectual entertainment  which  Rome  afforded.  By  this 
time  the  rules  of  oratory  were  carefully  studied  and  reduced 
to  scientific  treatises.  One  of  these,  the  work  of  an  other- 
wise unknown  Cornificius,  is  still  extant.  It  owes  its 
preservation  to  an  erroneous  tradition  which  ascribed  it  to 
the  pen  of  Cicero,  and  regarded  it  as  an  earlier  draft  of 
his  treatise  De  Inventione.  That  treatise  goes  over  much  the 
same  ground,  and  is  often  verbally  copied  from  the  earlier 
work,  of  which  it  was,  in  fact,  a  new  edition  revised  and 
largely  rewritten. 

Latin  history  during  this  period  made  considerable 
progress.  It  was  a  common  practice  among  statesmen  to 
write  memoirs  of  their  own  life  and  times ;  among  others 
of  less  note,  Sulla  the  dictator  left  at  his  death  twenty-two 
books  of  Commcntarii  Rerum  Gestarum,  which  were  after- 
wards published  by  his  secretary.  In  regular  history  the 
most  important  name  is  that  of  Quintus  Claudius  Quadri- 
garius.  His  work  differed  from  those  of  the  earlier  annalists 


III.]  Pre-Ciceronian  Prose.  37 

in  passing  over  the  legendary  period,  and  beginning  with 
the  earliest  authentic  documents ;  in  research  and  critical 
judgment  it  reached  a  point  only  excelled  by  Sallust.  His 
style  was  formed  on  that  of  older  annalists,  and  is  therefore 
somewhat  archaic  for  the  period.  Considerable  fragments, 
including  the  well-known  description  of  the  single  combat 
in  361  B.C.  between  Titus  Manlius  Torquatus  and  the 
Gallic  chief,  survive  in  quotations  by  Aulus  Gellius  and  the 
archaists  of  the  later  Empire.  More  voluminous  but  less 
valuable  than  the  Annals  of  Claudius  were  those  of  his 
contemporary,  Valerius  Antias,  which  formed  the  main 
groundwork  for  the  earlier  books  of  Livy,  and  were  largely 
used  by  him  even  for  later  periods,  when  more  trust- 
worthy authorities  were  available.  Other  historians  of  this 
period,  Sisenna  and  Macer,  soon  fell  into  neglect  —  the 
former  as  too  archaic,  the  latter  as  too  diffuse  and  rhetorical, 
for  literary  permanence. 

Somewhat  apart  from  the  historical  writers  stand  the 
antiquarians,  who  wrote  during  this  period  in  large  numbers, 
and  whose  treatises  filled  the  library  from  which,  in  the 
age  of  Cicero,  Varro  compiled  his  monumental  works.  As 
numerous  probably  were  the  writers  of  the  school  of  Cato, 
on  husbandry,  domestic  economy,  and  other  practical 
subjects,  and  the  grammarians  and  philologists,  whose 
works  formed  two  other  large  sections  in  Varro's  library. 
On  all  sides  prose  was  full  of  life  and  growth ;  the  complete 
literary  perfection  of  the  age  of  Cicero,  Caesar,  and  Sallust 
might  already  be  foreseen  as  within  the  grasp  of  the  near 
future. 

Latin  poetry,  meanwhile,  hung  in  the  balance.  The  first 
great  wave  of  the  Greek  impulse  had  exhausted  itself  in 
Ennius  and  the  later  tragedians.  Prose  had  so  developed 
that  the  poetical  form  was  no  longer  a  necessity  for  the 
expression  of  ideas,  as  it  had  been  in  the  palmy  days  of 
Latin  tragedy.  The  poetry  of  the  future  must  be,  so  to 
speak,  poetry  for  its  own  sake,  until  some  new  tradition 


38  Latin  Literature.  p. 

were  formed  which  should  make  certain  metrical  forms 
once  more  the  recognised  and  traditional  vehicle  for  certain 
kinds  of  literary  expression.  In  the  blank  of  poetry  we 
may  note  a  translation  of  the  Iliad  into  hexameters  by  one 
Gnaeus  Matius,  and  the  earliest  known  attempts  at  imitation 
of  the  forms  of  Greek  lyrical  verse  by  an  equally  obscure 
Laevius  Melissus,  as  dim  premonitions  of  the  new  growth 
which  Latin  poetry  was  feeling  after;  but  neither  these, 
nor  the  literary  tragedies  which  still  were  occasionally  pro- 
duced by  a  survival  of  the  fashions  of  an  earlier  age,  are 
of  any  account  for  their  own  sake.  Prose  and  poetry  stood 
at  the  two  opposite  poles  of  their  cycle ;  and  thus  it  is 
that,  while  the  poets  and  prose-writers  of  the  Ciceronian 
age  are  equally  imperishable  in  fame,  the  latter  but  repre- 
sent the  culmination  of  a  broad  and  harmonious  develop- 
ment, while  of  the  former,  amidst  but  apart  from  the 
beginnings  of  a  new  literary  era,  there  shine,  splendid  like 
stars  out  of  the  darkness,  the  two  immortal  lights  of 
Lucretius  and  Catullus. 


IV. 

LUCRETIUS. 

THE  age  of  Cicero,  a  term  familiar  to  all  readers  as  indi- 
cating one  of  the  culminating  periods  of  literary  history, 
while  its  central  and  later  years  are  accurately  fixed,  may 
be  dated  in  its  commencement  from  varying  limits.  Cicero 
was  born  in  106  B.C.,  the  year  of  the  final  conquest  of 
Jugurtha,  and  the  year  before  the  terrible  Cimbrian  disaster 
at  Orange  :  he  perished  in  the  proscription  of  the  trium- 
virate in  December,  43  B.C.  His  first  appearance  in  public 
life  was  during  the  dictatorship  of  Sulla ;  and  either  from 
this  date,  or  from  one  ten  years  later  when  the  Sullan  con- 
stitution was  re-established  in  a  modified  form  by  Pompeius 
and  Crassus  in  their  first  consulate,  the  Ciceronian  age 
extends  over  a  space  which  approximates  in  the  one  case 
to  thirty,  in  the  other  to  forty  years.  No  period  in  ancient, 
and  few  in  comparatively  modern  history  are  so  pregnant 
with  interest  or  so  fully  and  intimately  known.  From  the 
comparative  obscurity  of  the  earlier  age  we  pass  into  a 
full  blaze  of  daylight.  It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say 
that  the  Rome  of  Cicero  is  as  familiar  to  modern  English 
readers  as  the  London  of  Queen  Anne,  to  readers  in 
modern  France  as  the  Paris  of  Louis  Quatorze.  We  can 
still  follow  with  unabated  interest  the  daily  fluctuations  of 
its  politics,  the  current  gossip  and  scandal  of  its  society, 
the  passing  fashions  of  domestic  life  as  revealed  in  private 

39 


40  Latin  Literature.  p. 

correspondence  or  the  disclosures  of  the  law  courts.  Yet 
in  the  very  centre  of  this  brilliantly  lighted  world,  one  of 
its  most  remarkable  figures  is  veiled  in  almost  complete 
darkness.  The  great  poem  of  Lucretius,  On  the  Nature  of 
Things,  though  it  not  only  revealed  a  profound  and  extraor- 
dinary genius,  but  marked  an  entirely  new  technical  level 
in  Latin  poetry,  stole  into  the  world  all  but  unnoticed ;  and 
of  its  author's  life,  though  a  pure  Roman  of  one  of  the  great 
governing  families,  only  one  or  two  doubtful  and  isolated 
facts  could  be  recovered  by  the  curiosity  of  later  commen- 
tators. The  single  sentence  in  St.  Jerome's  Chronicle 
which  practically  sums  up  the  whole  of  our  information 
runs  as  follows,  under  the  year  94  B.C.  :  — 

Titus  Lucretius  poeta  nascifur,  postea  amatorio  poculo  in 
furorem  versus  cum  aliquot  libros  per  intervalla  insaniae 
conscripsisset  quos  postea  Cicero  erne nda vit,  propria  se  manu 
interfecit  anno  aetatis  xliiii. 

Brief  and  straightforward  as  the  sentence  is,  every  clause 
in  it  has  given  rise  to  volumes  of  controversy.  Was 
Lucretius  born  in  the  year  named,  or  is  another  tradition 
correct,  which,  connecting  his  death  with  a  particular  event 
in  the  youth  of  Virgil,  makes  him  either  be  born  a  few  years 
earlier  or  die  a  few  years  younger?  Did  he  ever,  whether 
from  a  poisonous  philtre  or  otherwise,  lose  his  reason?  and 
can  a  poem  which  ranks  among  the  great  masterpieces  of 
genius  have  been  built  up  into  its  stately  fabric  —  for  this  is 
not  a  question  of  brief  lyrics  like  those  of  Smart  or  Cowper 
—  in  the  lucid  intervals  of  insanity?  Did  Cicero  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  editing  of  the  unfinished  poem?  If 
so,  which  Cicero  —  Marcus  or  Quintus  ?  and  why,  in  either 
case,  is  there  no  record  of  the  fact  in  their  correspondence, 
or  in  any  writing  of  the  period?  All  these  questions  are 
probably  insoluble,  and  the  notice  of  Jerome  leaves  the 
whole  life  and  personality  of  the  poet  still  completely 
hidden.  Yet  we  have  little  or  nothing  else  to  go  upon. 
There  is  one  brief  and  casual  allusion  in  one  of  Cicero's 


IV.]  Lucretius.  41 

letters  of  the  year  54  B.C.  :  yet  it  speaks  of  "  poems,"  not 
the  single  great  poem  which  we  know;  and  most  editors 
agree  that  the  text  of  the  passage  is  corrupt,  and  must  be 
amended  by  the  insertion  of  a  non,  though  they  differ  on 
the  important  detail  of  the  particular  clause  in  which  it 
should  be  inserted.  That  the  earlier  Augustan  poets  should 
leave  their  great  predecessor  completely  unnoticed  is  less 
remarkable,  for  it  may  be  taken  as  merely  a  part  of  that 
curious  conspiracy  of  silence  regarding  the  writers  of  the 
Ciceronian  age  which,  whether  under  political  pressure 
or  not,  they  all  adopted.  Even  Ovid,  never  ungenerous 
though  not  always  discriminating  in  his  praise,  dismisses 
him  in  a  list  of  Latin  poets  with  a  single  couplet  of  vague 
eulogy.  In  the  reactionary  circles  of  the  Empire,  Lucretius 
found  recognition  ;  but  the  critics  who,  according  to  Tacitus, 
ranked  him  above  Virgil  may  be  reasonably  suspected  of 
doing  so  more  from  caprice  than  from  rational  conviction. 
Had  the  poem  itself  perished  (and  all  the  extant  manu- 
scripts are  copies  of  a  single  original),  no  one  would  have 
thought  that  such  a  preference  could  be  anything  but  a 
piece  of  antiquarian  pedantry,  like  the  revival,  in  the  same 
period,  of  the  plays  of  the  early  tragedians.  But  the  fortu- 
nate and  slender  chance  which  has  preserved  it  shows  that 
their  opinion,  whether  right  or  wrong,  is  one  which  at  all 
events  is  neither  absurd  nor  unarguable.  For  in  the  De 
Rerum  Natura  we  are  brought  face  to  face  not  only  with  an 
extraordinary  literary  achievement,  but  with  a  mind  whose 
profound  and  brilliant  genius  has  only  of  late  years,  and 
with  the  modern  advance  of  physical  and  historical  science, 
been  adequately  recognised. 

The  earliest  Greek  impulse  in  Latin  poetry  had  long  been 
exhausted ;  and  the  fashion  among  the  new  generation  was 
to  admire  and  study  beyond  all  else  the  Greek  poets  of  the 
decadence,  who  are  generally,  and  without  any  substantial 
injustice,  lumped  together  by  the  name  of  the  Alexandrian 
school.  The  common  quality  in  all  this  poetry  was  its 


42  Latin  Literature.  fl 

great  learning,  and  its  remoteness  from  nature.  It  was 
poetry  written  in  a  library ;  it  viewed  the  world  through  a 
highly  coloured  medium  of  literary  and  artistic  tradition. 
The  laborious  perfectness  of  execution  which  the  taste  of 
the  time  demanded  was,  as  a  rule,  lavished  on  little  subjects, 
patient  carvings  in  ivory.  One  branch  of  the  Alexandrian 
school  which  was  largely  followed  was  that  of  the  didactic 
poets — Aratus,  Nicander,  Euphorion,  and  a  host  of  others 
less  celebrated.  Cicero,  in  mature  life,  speaks  with  some 
contempt  of  the  taste  for  Euphorion  among  his  contempo- 
raries. But  he  had  himself,  as  a  young  man,  followed  the 
fashion,  and  translated  the  Phaenomena  of  Aratus  into  won- 
derfully polished  and  melodious  hexameter  verse. 

Not  unaffected  by  this  fashion  of  the  day,  but  turning 
from  it  to  older  and  nobler  models  —  Homer  and  Empe- 
docles  in  Greek,  Ennius  in  Latin  —  Lucretius  conceived  the 
imposing  scheme  of  a  didactic  poem  dealing  with  the  whole 
field  of  life  and  nature  as  interpreted  by  the  Epicurean 
philosophy.  He  lived  to  carry  out  his  work  almost  to  com- 
pletion. It  here  and  there  wants  the  final  touches  of 
arrangement ;  one  or  two  discussions  are  promised  and  not 
given ;  some  paragraphs  are  repeated,  and  others  have  not 
been  worked  into  their  proper  place  ;  but  substantially,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Aeneid,  we  have  the  complete  poem  before 
us,  and  know  perfectly  within  what  limits  it  might  have  been 
altered  or  improved  by  fuller  revision. 

As  pure  literature,  the  Nature  of  Things  has  all  the 
defects  inseparable  from  a  didactic  poem,  that  unstable  com- 
bination of  discordant  elements,  and  from  a  poem  which  is 
not  only  didactic,  but  argumentative,  and  in  parts  highly 
controversial.  Nor  are  these  difficulties  in  the  least  degree 
evaded  or  smoothed  over  by  the  poet.  As  a  teacher,  he  is 
in  deadly  earnest ;  as  a  controversialist,  his  first  object  is  to 
refute  and  convince.  The  graces  of  poetry  are  never  for  a 
moment  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  full  development  of 
an  argument.  Much  of  the  poem  is  a  chain  of  intricate 


IV.]  Lticretius.  43 

reasoning  hammered  into  verse  by  sheer  force  of  hand.  The 
ardent  imagination  of  the  poet  struggles  through  masses  of 
intractable  material  which  no  genius  could  wholly  fuse  into 
a  pure  metal  that  could  take  perfect  form.  His  language, 
in  the  fine  prologue  to  the  fourth  book  of  the  poem,  shows 
his  attitude  towards  his  art  very  clearly. 

Avia  Pieridum  peragro  loca  nullius  ante 
Trita  solo  ;  iuvat  integros  acccdere  fontes 
Atque  haurire,  iuvatquc  novos  decerpere  flores 
Insignemque  meo  capiti petert  inde  coronam 
Undc  prius  nulli  velarint  tempora  Musae : 
Primum  quod  magnis  doceo  de  rebus,  et  artis 
Religionum  animum  nodis  exsolvere  pergo, 
Deinde  quod  obscura  de  re  tarn  lucida pango 
Carmina,  musaeo  contingens  cuncta  lepore. 

The  joy  and  glory  of  his  art  come  second  in  his  mind  to  his 
passionate  love  of  truth,  and  the  deep  moral  purport  of 
what  he  believes  to  be  the  one  true  message  for  mankind. 
The  human  race  lies  fettered  by  superstition  and  ignorance  ; 
his  mission  is  to  dispel  their  darkness  by  that  light  of  truth 
which  is  "  clearer  than  the  beams  of  the  sun  or  the  shining 
shafts  of  day."  Spinoza  has  been  called,  in  a  bold  figure,  "  a 
man  drunk  with  God ;  "  the  contemplation  of  the  "  nature 
of  things,"  the  physical  structure  of  the  universe,  and  the 
living  and  all  but  impersonate  law  which  forms  and  sustains 
it,  has  the  same  intoxicating  influence  over  Lucretius. 
God  and  man  are  alike  to  him  bubbles  on  the  ceaseless 
stream  of  existence ;  yet  they  do  not  therefore,  as  they 
have  so  often  done  in  other  philosophies,  fade  away  to 
a  spectral  thinness.  His  contemplation  of  existence  is  no 
brooding  over  abstractions ;  Nature  is  not  in  his  view  the 
majestic  and  silent  figure  before  whose  unchanging  eyes 
the  shifting  shadow-shapes  go  and  come ;  but  an  essen- 
tial life,  manifesting  itself  in  a  million  workings,  creatrix, 


44  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

gubernans,  daedala  rerum.  The  universe  is  filled  through  all 
its  illimitable  spaces  by  the  roar  of  her  working,  the  cease- 
less unexhausted  energy  with  which  she  alternates  life  and 
death. 

To  our  own  age  the  Epicurean  philosophy  has  a  double 
interest.  Not  only  was  it  a  philosophy  of  life  and  conduct, 
but,  in  the  effort  to  place  life  and  conduct  under  ascertain- 
able  physical  laws,  it  was  led  to  frame  an  extremely  detailed 
and  ingenious  body  of  natural  philosophy,  which,  partly 
from  being  based  on  really  sound  postulates,  partly  from 
a  happy  instinct  in  connecting  phenomena,  still  remains 
interesting  and  valuable.  To  the  Epicureans,  indeed,  as 
to  all  ancient  thinkers,  the  scientific  method  as  it  is  now 
understood  was  unknown ;  and  a  series  of  unverified  gen- 
eralisations, however  brilliant  and  acute,  is  not  the  true 
way  towards  knowledge.  But  it  still  remains  an  astonishing 
fact  that  many  of  the  most  important  physical  discoveries 
of  modern  times  are  hinted  at  or  even  expressly  stated  by 
Lucretius.  The  general  outlines  of  the  atomic  doctrine 
have  long  been  accepted  as  in  the  main  true ;  in  all  im- 
portant features  it  is  superior  to  any  other  physical  theory 
of  the  universe  which  existed  up  to  the  seventeenth  century. 
In  his  theory  of  light  Lucretius  was  in  advance  of  Newton. 
In  his  theory  of  chemical  affinities  (for  he  describes  the 
thing  though  the  nomenclature  was  unknown  to  him)  he 
was  in  advance  of  Lavoisier.  In  his  theory  of  the  ultimate 
constitution  of  the  atom  he  is  in  striking  agreement  with  the 
views  of  the  ablest  living  physicists.  The  essential  function 
of  science  —  to  reduce  apparently  disparate  phenomena  to 
the  expressions  of  a  single  law — is  not  with  him  the  object 
of  a  moment's  doubt  or  uncertainty. 

Towards  real  progress  in  knowledge  two  things  are  alike 
indispensable :  a  true  scientific  method,  and  imaginative 
insight.  The  former  is,  in  the  main,  a  creation  of  the 
modern  world,  nor  was  Lucretius  here  in  advance  of  his 
age.  But  in  the  latter  quality  he  is  unsurpassed,  if  not 


IV.]  Lucretius.  45 

unequalled.  Perhaps  this  is  even  clearer  in  another  field 
of  science,  that  which  has  within  the  last  generation  risen 
to  such  immense  proportions  under  the  name  of  anthropology. 
Thirty  years  ago  it  was  the  first  and  second  books  of  the 
De  Rerum  Natura  which  excited  the  greatest  enthusiasm  in 
the  scientific  world.  Now  that  the  atomic  theory  has  passed 
into  the  rank  of  received  doctrines,  the  brilliant  sketch,  given 
in  the  fifth  book,  of  the  beginnings  of  life  upon  the  earth, 
the  evolution  of  man  and  the  progress  of  human  society,  is 
the  portion  of  the  poem  in  which  his  scientific  imagination 
is  displayed  most  astonishingly.  A  Roman  aristocrat,  living 
among  a  highly  cultivated  society,  Lucretius  had  been  yet 
endowed  by  nature  with  the  primitive  instincts  of  the  savage. 
He  sees  the  ordinary  processes  of  everyday  life  —  weaving, 
carpentry,  metal-working,  even  such  specialised  forms  of 
manual  art  as  the  polishing  of  the  surface  of  marble  —  with 
the  fresh  eye  of  one  who  sees  them  all  for  the  first  time. 
Nothing  is  to  him  indistinct  through  familiarity.  In  virtue 
of  this  absolute  clearness  of  vision  it  costs  him  no  effort  to 
throw  himself  back  into  prehistoric  conditions  and  the 
wild  life  of  the  earliest  men.  Even  further  than  this  he 
can  pierce  the  strange  recesses  of  the  past.  Before  his 
imagination  the  earth  rises  swathed  in  tropical  forests, 
and  all  strange  forms  of  life  issuing  and  jostling  one 
another  for  existence  in  the  steaming  warmth  of  per- 
petual summer.  Among  a  thousand  types  that  flowered 
and  fell,  the  feeble  form  of  primitive  man  is  distinguished, 
without  fire,  without  clothing,  without  articulate  speech. 
Through  the  midnight  of  the  woods,  shivering  at  the  cries 
of  the  stealthy- footed  prowlers  of  the  darkness,  he  crouches 
huddled  in  fallen  leaves,  waiting  for  the  rose  of  dawn.  Little 
by  little  the  prospect  clears  round  him.  The  branches  of 
great  trees,  grinding  one  against  another  in  the  windy 
forest,  break  into  a  strange  red  flower ;  he  gathers  it  and 
hoards  it  in  his  cave.  There,  when  wind  and  rain  beat 
without,  the  hearth-fire  burns  through  the  winter,  and  round 


46  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

it  gathers  that  other  marvellous  invention  of  which  the 
hearth-fire  became  the  mysterious  symbol,  the  family. 
From  this  point  the  race  is  on  the  full  current  of  progress, 
of  which  the  remainder  of  the  book  gives  an  account  as 
essentially  true  as  it  is  incomparably  brilliant.  If  we 
consider  how  little  Lucretius  had  to  go  upon  in  this 
reconstruction  of  lost  history,  his  imaginative  insight  seems 
almost  miraculous.  Even  for  the  later  stages  of  human 
progress  he  had  to  rely  mainly  on  the  eye  which  saw  deep 
below  the  surface  into  the  elementary  structure  of  civilisation. 
There  was  no  savage  life  within  the  scope  of  his  actual 
observation.  Books  wavered  between  traditions  of  an 
impossible  golden  age  and  fragments  of  primitive  legend 
which  were  then  quite  unintelligible,  and  are  only  now 
giving  up  their  secret  under  a  rigorous  analysis.  Further 
back,  and  beyond  the  rude  civilisation  of  the  earlier 
races  of  Greece  and  Italy,  data  wholly  failed.  We  have 
supplemented,  but  hardly  given  more  life  to,  his  picture  of 
the  first  beginnings,  by  evidence  drawn  from  a  thousand 
sources  then  unknown  or  unexplored  —  from  coal-measures 
and  mud-deposits,  Pictish  barrows  and  lacustrine  midden- 
steads,  remote  tribes  of  hidden  Africa  and  islands  of  the 
Pacific  Sea. 

Such  are  the  characteristics  which,  to  one  or  another 
epoch  of  modern  times,  give  the  poem  of  Lucretius  so 
unique  an  interest.  But  for  these  as  for  all  ages,  its  per- 
manent value  must  lie  mainly  in  more  universal  qualities. 
History  and  physical  science  alike  are  in  all  poetry  ancillary 
to  ideas.  It  is  in  his  moral  temper,  his  profound  insight 
into  life,  that  Lucretius  rises  to  the  greatest  heights  of 
thought  and  the  utmost  perfection  of  language.  The 
Epicurean  philosophy,  in  his  hands,  takes  all  the  moral 
fervour,  the  ennobling  influence  of  a  religion.  The 
depth  of  his  religious  instinct  may  be  measured  by  the 
passion  of  his  antagonism  to  what  he  regarded  as 
superstition.  Human  life  in  his  eyes  was  made  wretched, 


IV.]  Lucretius.  47 

mean,  and  cruel  by  one  great  cause  —  the  fear  of  death  and 
of  what  happens  after  it.  That  death  is  not  to  be  feared, 
that  nothing  happens  after  it,  is  the  keystone  of  his  whole 
system.  It  is  after  an  accumulation  of  seventeen  proofs, 
hurled  one  upon  another  at  the  reader,  of  the  mortality  of 
the  soul,  that,  letting  himself  loose  at  the  highest  emotional 
and  imaginative  tension,  he  breaks  into  that  wonderful 
passage,  which  Virgil  himself  never  equalled,  and  which  in 
its  lofty  passion,  its  piercing  tenderness,  the  stately  roll  of 
its  cadences,  is  perhaps  unmatched  in  human  speech. 

"  lam  iam  non  domus  accipiet  te  laeta,  neque  uxor 
Optima,  nee  dulces  occtirrent  oscula  nati 
Praeripere  et  tacita  pectus  duke  dine  tangent : 
Non  potcris  factis  florentibus  esse,  tuisquc 
Praesidium:  misero  tnisere,"  aiunt,  "  omnia  ademit 
Una  dies  infesta  tibi  tot praemia  vitae  .  .  ." 

"  '  Now  no  more  shall  a  glad  home  and  a  true  wife  welcome 
thee,  nor  darling  children  race  to  snatch  thy  first  kisses  and 
touch  thy  heart  with  a  sweet  and  silent  content ;  no  more 
mayest  thou  be  prosperous  in  thy  doings  and  a  defence  to 
thine  own :  alas  and  woe  ! '  say  they,  '  one  disastrous  day 
has  taken  all  these  prizes  of  thy  life  away  from  thee '  —  but 
thereat  they  do  not  add  this,  *  and  now  no  more  does  any 
longing  for  these  things  beset  thee.'  This  did  their  thought 
but  clearly  see  and  their  speech  follow,  they  would  release 
themselves  from  great  heartache  and  fear.  '  Thou,  indeed, 
as  thou  art  sunk  in  the  sleep  of  death,  wilt  so  be  for  the 
rest  of  the  ages,  severed  from  all  weary  pains;  but  we, 
while  close  by  us  thou  didst  turn  ashen  on  the  awful  pyre, 
made  unappeasable  lamentation,  and  everlastingly  shall 
time  never  rid  our  heart  of  anguish.'  Ask  we  then  this  of 
him,  what  there  is  that  is  so  very  bitter,  if  sleep  and  peace 
be  the  conclusion  of  the  matter,  to  make  one  fade  away  in 
never-ending  grief? 

"  Thus  too  men  often  do  when,  set  at  the  feast,  they  hold 


48  Latin  Literature.  [I 

their  cups  and  shade  their  faces  with  garlands,  saying  sadly, 
'  Brief  is  this  joy  for  wretched  men ;  soon  will  it  have  been, 
and  none  may  ever  after  recall  it ! '  as  if  this  were  to  be 
first  and  foremost  of  the  ills  of  death,  that  thirst  and  dry 
burning  should  waste  them  miserably,  or  desire  after  any- 
thing else  beset  them.  For  not  even  then  does  any  one 
miss  himself  and  his  life  when  soul  and  body  together  are 
deep  asleep  and  at  rest ;  for  all  we  care,  such  slumber  might 
go  on  for  ever,  nor  does  any  longing  after  ourselves  touch 
us  then,  though  then  those  first-beginnings  through  our 
body  swerve  away  but  a  very  little  from  the  movements  that 
bring  back  the  senses  when  the  man  starts  up  and  gathers 
himself  out  of  sleep.  Far  less,  therefore,  must  we  think 
death  concerns  us,  if  less  than  nothing  there  can  be ;  for  at 
greater  sundering  in  the  mass  of  matter  follows  upon  death, 
nor  does  any  one  awake  and  stand,  whom  the  cold  stoppage 
of  death  once  has  reached. 

"  Yet  again,  were  the  Nature  of  things  suddenly  to  utter 
a  voice,  and  thus  with  her  own  lips  upbraid  one  of  us, 
'What  ails  thee  so,  O  mortal,  to  let  thyself  loose  in  too 
feeble  grievings?  why  weep  and  wail  at  death?  for  has 
thy  past  life  and  overspent  been  sweet  to  thee,  and  not  all 
the  good  thereof,  as  if  poured  into  a  pierced  vessel,  has 
run  through  and  joylessly  perished,  why  dost  thou  not  retire 
like  a  banqueter  filled  with  life,  and  calmly,  O  fool,  take  thy 
peaceful  sleep?  But  if  all  thou  hast  had  is  perished  and 
spilt,  and  thy  life  is  hateful,  why  seekest  thou  yet  to  add 
more  which  shall  once  again  all  perish  and  fall  joylessly 
away?  why  not  rather  make  an  end  of  life  and  labour? 
for  there  is  nothing  more  that  I  can  contrive  and  invent 
for  thy  delight ;  all  things  are  the  same  for  ever.  Even 
were  thy  body  not  yet  withered,  nor  thy  limbs  weary  and 
worn,  yet  all  things  remain  the  same,  didst  thou  go  on  to 
live  all  the  generations  down,  nay,  even  more,  wert  thou 
never  doomed  to  die  '  —  what  do  we  answer?  " 

It  is  in  passages  of  which  the  two  hundred  lines  beginning 


IV.]  Lucretius.  49 

thus  are  the  noblest  instance,  passages  of  profound  and 
majestic  broodings  over  life  and  death,  that  the  long  rolling 
weight  of  the  Lucretian  hexameter  tells  with  its  full  force. 
For  the  golden  cadence  of  poesy  we  have  to  wait  till  Virgil ; 
but  the  strain  that  Lucretius  breathes  through  bronze  is 
statelier  and  more  sonorous  than  any  other  in  the  stately 
and  sonorous  Roman  speech.  Like  Naevius  a  century  and 
a  half  before,  he  might  have  left  the  proud  and  pathetic 
lines  on  his  tomb  that,  after  he  was  dead,  men  forgot  to 
speak  Latin  in  Rome.  He  stands  side  by  side  with  Julius 
Caesar  in  the  perfect  purity  of  his  language.  The  writing 
of  the  next  age,  whether  prose  or  verse,  gathered  richness 
and  beauty  from  alien  sources ;  if  the  poem  of  Lucretius 
had  no  other  merit,  it  would  be  a  priceless  document  as 
a  model  of  the  purest  Latin  idiom  in  the  precise  age  of  its 
perfection.  It  follows  from  this  that  in  certain  points  of 
technique  Lucretius  was  behind  his  age,  or  rather,  deliberately 
held  aloof  from  the  movement  of  his  age  towards  a  more 
intricate  and  elaborate  art.  The  wave  of  Alexandrianism 
only  touched  him  distantly ;  he  takes  up  the  Ennian 
tradition  where  Ennius  had  left  it,  and  puts  into  it  the 
immensely  increased  faculty  of  trained  expression  which 
a  century  of  continuous  literary  practice,  and  his  own 
admirably  clear  and  quick  intelligence,  enable  him  to 
supply.  The  only  Greek  poets  mentioned  by  him  are 
Homer  and  Empedocles.  His  remoteness  from  the  main 
current  of  contemporary  literature  is  curiously  parallel  to 
that  of  Milton.  The  Epicurean  philosophy  was  at  this 
time,  as  it  never  was  either  earlier  or  later,  the  predominant 
creed  among  the  ruling  class  at  Rome  :  but  except  in  so  far 
as  its  shallower  aspects  gave  the  motive  for  light  verse,  it 
was  as  remote  from  poetry  as  the  Puritan  theology  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  In  both  cases  a  single  poet  of 
immense  genius  was  also  deeply  penetrated  with  the  spirit 
of  a  creed.  In  both  cases  his  poetical  affinity  was  with  the 
poets  of  an  earlier  day,  and  his  poetical  manner  something 


5<D  Latin  Literature,  [I. 

absolutely  peculiar  to  himself.  Both  of  them  under  this 
strangely  mixed  impulse  set  themselves  to  embody  their 
creed  in  a  great  work  of  art.  But  the  art  did  not  appeal 
strongly  to  sectaries,  nor  the  creed  to  artists.  The  De 
Rerum  Natura  and  the  Paradise  Lost,  while  they  exercised 
a  profound  influence  over  later  poets,  came  silently  into  the 
world,  and  seem  to  have  passed  over  the  heads  of  their 
immediate  contemporaries.  There  is  yet  another  point  of 
curious  resemblance  between  them.  Every  student  of 
Milton  knows  that  the  only  English  poet  from  whom  he 
systematically  borrowed  matter  and  phrase  was  one  of  the 
third  rate,  who  now  would  be  almost  forgotten  but  for  the 
use  Milton  made  of  him.  For  one  imitation  of  Spenser  or 
Shakespeare  in  the  Paradise  Lost  it  would  be  easy  to  adduce 
ten  —  not  mere  coincidences  of  matter,  but  direct  trans- 
ferences —  of  Sylvester's  Du  Bartas.  While  Lucretius  was  a 
boy,  Cicero  published  the  version  in  Latin  hexameters  of  the 
Phaenomena  and  Prognostica  of  Aratus  to  which  reference 
has  already  been  made.  These  poems  consist  of  only 
between  eleven  and  twelve  hundred  lines  in  all,  but  had, 
in  the  later  Alexandrian  period,  a  reputation  (like  that  of 
the  Sepmaine  of  Du  Bartas)  far  in  excess  of  their  real 
merit,  and  were  among  the  most  powerful  influences  in 
founding  the  new  style.  The  many  imitations  in  Lucretius 
of  the  extant  fragments  of  these  Ciceronian  versions  show 
that  he  must  have  studied  their  vocabulary  and  versification 
with  minute  care.  The  increased  technical  possibilities 
shown  by  them  to  exist  in  the  Latin  hexameter  —  for  in 
them,  as  in  nearly  all  his  permanent  work,  Cicero  was 
mastering  the  problem  of  making  his  own  language  an 
adequate  vehicle  of  sustained  expression  —  may  even  have 
been  the  determining  influence  that  made  Lucretius  adopt 
this  poetical  form.  Till  then  it  may  have  been  just  possible 
that  native  metrical  forms  might  still  reassert  themselves. 
Inscriptions  of  the  last  century  of  the  Republic  show  that 
the  saturnian  still  lingered  in  use  side  by  side  with  the 


IV.]  Lucretius.  51 

rude  popular  hexameters  which  were  gradually  displacing 
it ;  and  the  Punic  War  of  Naevius  was  still  a  classic.  Lu- 
cretius' choice  of  the  hexameter,  and  his  definite  conquest 
of  it  as  a  medium  of  the  richest  and  most  varied  expression, 
placed  the  matter  beyond  recall.  The  technical  imperfec- 
tions which  remained  in  it  were  now  reduced  within  a  vis- 
ible compass ;  its  power  to  convey  sustained  argument,  to 
express  the  most  delicate  shades  of  meaning,  to  adjust 
itself  to  the  greatest  heights  and  the  subtlest  tones  of 
emotion,  was  already  acquired  when  Lucretius  handed  it  on 
to  Virgil.  And  here,  too,  as  well  as  in  the  wide  field  of 
literature  with  which  his  fame  is  more  intimately  connected, 
from  the  actual  impulse  given  by  his  own  early  work  and 
heightened  by  admiration  of  his  brilliant  maturity,  even 
more  than  from  the  dubious  tradition  of  his  editorial  care 
after  the  poet's  death,  the  glory  of  the  Ciceronian  age  is  in 
close  relation  to  the  personal  genius  of  Cicero. 


V. 

LYRIC  POETRY  :    CATULLUS. 

CONTEMPORARY  with  Lucretius,  but,  unlike  him,  living  in 
the  full  whirl  and  glare  of  Roman  life,  was  a  group  of 
young  men  who  were  professed  followers  of  the  Alexandrian 
school.  In  the  thirty  years  which  separate  the  Civil  war 
and  the  Sullan  restoration  from  the  sombre  period  that 
opened  with  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  between  Caesar 
and  the  senate,  social  life  at  Rome  among  the  upper  classes 
was  unusually  brilliant  and  exciting.  The  outward  polish 
of  Greek  civilisation  was  for  the  first  time  fully  mastered, 
and  an  intelligent  interest  in  art  and  literature  was  the 
fashion  of  good  society.  The  "  young  man  about  town," 
whom  we  find  later  fully  developed  in  the  poetry  of  Ovid, 
sprang  into  existence,  but  as  the  government  was  still  in 
the  hands  of  the  aristocracy,  fashion  and  politics  were 
intimately  intermingled,  and  the  lighter  literature  of  the 
day  touched  grave  issues  on  every  side.  The  poems  of 
Catullus  are  full  of  references  to  his  friends  and  his 
enemies  among  this  group  of  writers.  Two  of  the  former, 
Cinna  and  Calvus,  were  poets  of  considerable  importance. 
Gaius  Helvius  Cinna  —  somewhat  doubtfully  identified  with 
the  "  Cinna  the  poet "  who  met  such  a  tragical  end  at  the 
hands  of  the  populace  after  Caesar's  assassination  —  carried 
the  Alexandrian  movement  to  its  most  uncompromising 
conclusions.  His  fame  (and  that  fame  was  very  great) 

52 


V.]  Cinna  and  Calvus.  53 

rested  on  a  short  poem  called  Zmyrna,  over  which  he  spent 
ten  years'  labour,  and  which,  by  subject  and  treatment  alike, 
carried  the  Alexandrian  method  to  its  furthest  excess.  In 
its  recondite  obscurity  it  outdid  Lycophron  himself.  More 
than  one  grammarian  of  the  time  made  a  reputation  solely 
by  a  commentary  on  it.  It  throws  much  light  on  the 
peculiar  artistic  position  of  Catullus,  to  bear  in  mind  that 
this  masterpiece  of  frigid  pedantry  obtained  his  warm  and 
evidently  sincere  praise. 

The  other  member  of  the  triad,  Gaius  Licinius  Macer 
Calvus,  one  of  the  most  brilliant  men  of  his  time,  was  too 
deeply  plunged  in  politics  to  be  more  than  an  accomplished 
amateur  in  poetry.  Yet  it  must  have  been  more  than  his 
intimate  friendship  with  Catullus,  and  their  common  fate 
of  too  early  a  death,  that  made  the  two  names  so  con- 
stantly coupled  afterwards.  By  the  critics  of  the  Silver 
Age,  no  less  than  by  Horace  and  Propertius,  the  same  idea 
is  frequently  repeated,  which  has  its  best-known  expression 
in  Ovid's  beautiful  invocation  in  his  elegy  on  Tibullus  — 

Obvius  huic  venias,  hedera  iuvenilia  cinctus 
Tempera,  cum  Calvo,  docte  Catulle,  tuo. 

We  must  lament  the  total  loss  of  a  volume  of  lyrics  which 
competent  judges  thought  worthy  to  be  set  beside  that  of 
his  wonderful  friend. 

Gaius  Valerius  Catullus  of  Verona,  one  of  the  greatest 
names  of  Latin  poetry,  belonged,  like  most  of  this  group, 
to  a  wealthy  and  distinguished  family,  and  was  introduced 
at  an  early  age  to  the  most  fashionable  circles  of  the 
capital.  He  was  just  so  much  younger  than  Lucretius  that 
the  Marian  terror  and  the  Sullan  proscriptions  can  hardly 
have  left  any  strong  traces  on  his  memory ;  when  he  died, 
Caesar  was  still  fighting  in  Gaul,  and  the  downfall  of  the 
Republic  could  only  be  dimly  foreseen.  In  time,  no  less 
than  in  genius,  he  represents  the  fine  flower  of  the 
Ciceronian  age.  He  was  about  five  and  twenty  when  the 


54  Latin  Literature.  p. 

famous  liaison  began  between  him  and  the  lady  whom  he 
has  immortalised  under  the  name  of  Lesbia.  By  birth  a 
Claudia,  and  wife  of  her  cousin,  a  Caecilius  Metellus,  she 
belonged  by  blood  and  marriage  to  the  two  proudest  families 
of  the  inner  circle  of  the  aristocracy.  Clodia  was  seven 
years  older  than  Catullus  ;  but  that  only  made  their  mutual 
attraction  more  irresistible :  and  the  death  of  her  husband 
in  the  year  after  his  consulship,  whether  or  not  there  was 
foundation  for  the  common  rumour  that  she  had  poisoned 
him,  was  an  incident  that  seems  to  have  passed  almost 
unnoticed  in  the  first  fervour  of  their  passion.  The  story  of 
infatuation,  revolt,  relapse,  fresh  revolt  and  fresh  entangle- 
ment, lives  and  breathes  in  the  verses  of  Catullus.  It  was 
after  their  final  rupture  that  Catullus  made  that  journey  to 
Asia  which  gave  occasion  to  his  charming  poems  of  travel. 
In  the  years  which  followed  his  return  to  Italy,  he  con- 
tinued to  produce  with  great  versatility  and  force,  making 
experiments  in  several  new  styles,  and  devoting  great  pains 
to  an  elaborate  metrical  technique.  Feats  of  learning  and 
skill  alternate  with  political  verses,  into  which  he  carries 
all  his  violence  of  love  and  hatred.  But  while  these  later 
poems  compel  our  admiration,  it  is  the  earlier  ones  which 
win  and  keep  our  love.  Though  the  old  liquid  note  ever 
and  again  recurs,  the  freshness  of  these  first  lyrics,  in  which 
life  and  love  and  poetry  are  all  alike  in  their  morning 
glory,  was  never  to  be  wholly  recaptured.  Nor  did  he 
live  to  settle  down  on  any  matured  second  manner.  He 
was  thirty-three  at  the  utmost  —  perhaps  not  more  than 
thirty  —  when  he  died,  leaving  behind  him  the  volume 
of  poems  which  sets  him  as  the  third  beside  Sappho  and 
Shelley. 

The  order  of  the  poems  in  this  volume  seems  to  be  an 
artificial  compromise  between  two  systems  —  one  an  arrange- 
ment by  metre,  and  the  other  by  date  of  composition.  In 
the  former  view  the  book  falls  into  three  sections  —  the  pure 
lyrics,  the  idyllic  pieces,  and  the  poems  in  elegiac  verse. 


V.]  Catullus.  55 

The  central  place  is  ocTpied  \  y  the  longest  and  most 
elaborate,  if  not  the  most  success!  ul,  of  his  poems,  the  epic 
idyl  on  the  marriage  of  Peleus  and  Thetis.  Before  this 
are  the  lyrics,  chiefly  in  the  phalaecean  eleven-syllabled 
verse  which  Catullus  made  so  peculiarly  his  own,  but  in 
iambic,  sapphic,  choriambic,  and  other  metres  also,  winding 
up  with  the  fine  epithalamium  written  for  the  marriage  of 
his  friends,  Mallius  and  Vinia.  The  transition  from  this 
group  of  lyrics  to  the  Marriage  of  Peleus  and  Thetis  is  made 
with  great  skill  through  another  wedding- chant,  an  idyl  in 
form,  but  approaching  to  a  lyric  in  tone,  without  any 
personal  allusions,  and  not  apparently  written  for  any 
particular  occasion.  Finally  comes  a  third  group  of  poems, 
extending  to  the  end  of  the  volume,  all  written  in  elegiac 
verse,  but  otherwise  extremely  varied  in  date,  subject,  and 
manner.  The  only  poem  thus  left  unaccounted  for,  the 
Atys,  is  inserted  in  the  centre  of  the  volume,  between  the 
two  hexameter  poems,  as  though  to  make  its  wild  metre 
and  rapid  movement  the  more  striking  by  contrast  with 
their  smooth  and  languid  rhythms.  Whether  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  whole  book  comes  from  the  poet's  own  hand 
is  very  doubtful.  His  dedicatory  verses,  which  stand  at 
the  head  of  the  volume,  are  more  probably  attached  to  the 
first  part  only,  the  book  of  lyrics.  Catullus  almost  cer- 
tainly died  in  54  B.C.  ;  the  only  positive  dates  assignable  to 
particular  poems,  in  either  the  lyric  or  the  elegiac  section, 
alike  lie  within  the  three  or  four  years  previous,  and,  while 
no  strict  chronological  order  is  followed,  the  pieces  at 
the  beginning  of  the  book  are  almost  certainly  the  earliest, 
and  those  at  the  end  among  the  latest. 

Among  the  poems  of  Catullus,  those  connected  with 
Lesbia  hold  the  foremost  place,  and,  as  expressions  of  direct 
personal  emotion,  are  unsurpassed,  not  merely  in  Latin,  but 
in  any  literature.  There  are  no  poems  of  the  growth  of 
love  among  them;  from  the  first,  Lesbia  appears  as  the 
absolute  mistress  of  her  lover's  heart  : 


56  Latin  Literatttre.  £l! 

Vivamus,  me  a  Lesbia,  atque  am  emus t 
Rumoresque  senum  severiorum 
Omnes  unius  aestimemus  assis. 
Soles  occidere  et  re  dire  possunt; 
Nobis  cum  semel  occidit  brevis  lux 
Nox  est  perpetua  una  dormienda :  — 

thus  he  cries  in  the  first  intoxication  of  his  happiness,  as 
yet  ignorant  that  the  brief  light  of  his  love  was  to  go  out 
before  noon.  Clodia  soon  showed  that  the  advice  not  to 
care  for  the  opinion  of  the  world  was,  in  her  case,  infinitely 
superfluous.  That  intolerable  pride  which  was  the  pro- 
verbial curse  of  the  Claudian  house  took  in  her  the  form 
of  a  flagrant  disregard  of  all  conventions.  In  the  early 
days  of  their  love,  Catullus  only  felt,  or  only  expressed,  the 
beautiful  side  of  this  recklessness.  His  affection  for  Clodia 
had  in  it,  he  says,  something  of  the  tenderness  of  parents 
for  their  children  ;  and  the  poems  themselves  bear  this  out. 
We  do  not  need  to  read  deeply  in  Catullus  to  be  assured 
that  merely  animal  passion  ran  as  strong  in  him  as  it  ever 
did  in  any  man.  But  in  the  earlier  poems  to  Lesbia  all 
this  turns  to  air  and  fire ;  the  intensity  of  his  love  melts 
its  grosser  elements  into  one  white  flame.  There  is  hardly 
even  a  word  of  Lesbia's  bodily  beauty;  her  great  blazing 
eyes  have  only  come  down  to  us  in  the  sarcastic  allusions 
made  to  them  by  Cicero  in  his  speeches  and  letters.  As 
in  some  of  the  finest  lyrics  of  Burns,  with  whom  Catullus, 
as  a  poet  of  love,  has  often  been  compared,  the  ardency  of 
passion  has  effected  for  quintessential  moments  the  work 
that  long  ages  may  work  out  on  the  whole  fabric  of  a 
human  soul —  Concretam  exemit  labem  purumque  reliquit 
aetherium  sensum  atque  aurdi  simplicis  ignem. 

But  long  after  the  rapture  had  passed  away  the  enthral- 
ment  remained.  Lesbia's  first  infidelities  only  riveted  her 
lover's  chains  — 


V.]  Catullus.  57 

Amantem  iniuria  talis 
Cogit  amare  magis  ; 

then  he  hangs  between  love  and  hatred,  in  the  poise  of 
soul  immortalised  by  him  in  the  famous  verse  — 

Odi  et  amo :  quare  id  facia  m  fortasse  requiris  ; 
Nescio,  sed fieri  sentio  et  excrucior. 

There  were  ruptures  and  reconciliations,  and  renewed 
ruptures  and  repeated  returns,  but  through  them  all,  while 
his  love  hardly  lessens,  his  hatred  continually  grows,  and 
the  lyrical  cry  becomes  one  of  the  sharpest  agony :  through 
protestations  of  fidelity,  through  wails  over  ingratitude,  he 
sinks  at  last  into  a  stupor  only  broken  by  moans  of  pain. 
Then  at  last  youth  reasserts  itself,  and  he  is  stung  into  new 
life  by  the  knowledge  that  he  has  simply  dropped  out  of 
Lesbia's  existence.  His  final  renunciation  is  no  longer 
addressed  to  her  deaf  ears,  but  flung  at  her  in  studied 
insult  through  two  of  the  associates  of  their  old  revels  in 
Rome. 

Cum  suis  vivat  valeatque  moechis 
Quos  simul  complexa  tenet  trecentos 
Nullum  amans  vere,  sed  identidem  *  omnium 
Ilia  rumpens  — 

so  the  hard  clear  verse  flashes  out,  to  melt  away  in  the 
dying  fall,  the  long-drawn  sweetness  of  the  last  words 
of  all  — 

Nee  meum  respectet  ut  ante  amorem 

Qui  illius  culpa  cecidit,  velut prati 

Ultimi  flos,  praetereunte  postquam 
Tactus  aratro  est. 

Foremost  among  the  other  lyrics  of  Catullus  which  have 

*  The  repetition  of  this  word  from  the  lovely  lyric,  Ille  mi  par  esse, 
where  it  occurs  in  the  same  place  of  the  verse,  is  a  stroke  of  subtle  and 
daring  art. 


58  Latin  Literature.  p. 

a  personal  reference  are  tnose  concerned  with  his  journey 
to  Asia,  and  the  dei  b  in  the  Troad  of  the  deeply  loved 
brother  whose  tomb  tie  visited  on  that  journey.  The 
excitement  of  travel  and  the  delight  of  return  have  never 
been  more  gracefully  touched  than  in*  these  little  lyrics,  of 
which  every  other  line  has  become  a  household  word,  the 
lam  ver  egelidos  referttepores,  and  the  lovely  Paene  insularum 
Sirmio  insularumque,  whose  cadences  have  gathered  a  fresh 
sweetness  in  the  hands  of  Tennyson.  But  a  higher  note  is 
reached  in  one  or  two  of  the  short  pieces  on  his  brother's 
death,  which  are  lyrics  in  all  but  technical  name.  The 
finest  of  these  has  all  the  delicate  simplicity  of  an  epitaph  by 
the  best  Greek  artists,  Leonidas  or  Antipater  or  Simonides 
himself,  and  combines  with  it  the  Latin  dignity,  and  a  range 
of  tones,  from  the  ocean-roll  of  its  opening  hexameter, 
Multas  per gentes  et  multa  per  aeqtiora  vectus,  to  the  sobbing 
wail  of  the  Atque  in  perpetuum  frater  ave  atque  vale  in 
which  it  dies  away,  that  is  hardly  equalled  except  in  some 
of  Shakespeare's  sonnets. 

It  is  in  these  short  lyrics  of  personal  passion  or  emotion 
that  the  genius  of  Catullus  is  most  unique ;  but  the  same 
high  qualities  appear  in  the  few  specimens  he  has  left  of 
more  elaborate  lyrical  architecture,  the  Ode  to  Diana,  the 
marriage-song  for  Mallius  and  Vinia,  and  the  Atys,  The 
first  of  these,  brief  as  it  is,  has  a  breadth  and  grandeur  of 
manner  which  —  as  in  the  noble  fragment  of  Keats'  Ode  to 
Maia  —  lift  it  into  the  rank  of  great  masterpieces.  The 
epithalamium,  on  the  other  hand,  with  which  the  book  of 
lyrics  ends,  while  very  simple  in  structure,  is  large  in  scale. 
It  is  as  much  longer  than  the  rest  of  the  lyrics  as  the 
marriage-song  which  stands  at  the  end  of  In  Memoriam 
is  than  the  other  sections  of  that  poem.  In  the  charm 
of  perfect  simplicity  it  equals  the  finest  of  his  lyrics ;  but 
besides  this,  it  has  in  its  clear  ringing  music  what  is  for 
this  period  an  almost  unique  premonition  of  the  new  world 
that  rose  out  of  the  darkness  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the 


V.]  Catullus.  59 

world  that  had  invented  bells  and  church-organs,  and 
had  added  a  new  romantic  beauty  to  love  and  marriage. 
With  a  richness  of  phrase  that  recalls  the  Song  of  Solomon, 
the  verses  clash  and  swing :  Open  your  bars,  O  gates ! 
the  bride  is  at  hand  /  Lo,  how  the  torches  shake  out  their 
splendid  tresses  /  .  .  .  Even  so  in  a  rich  lord's  garden-close 
might  stand  a  hyacinth- flower.  Lo,  the  torches  shake  out 
their  golden  tresses;  go  forth,  O  bride!  Day  wanes ;  go 
forth,  O  bride !  And  the  verse  at  the  end,  about  the 
baby  on  its  mother's  lap  — 

Torquatus  volo  parvulus 
Matris  e  gremio  suae 
Porrigens  teneras  manus 
Dulce  ride  at  ad  pair  em 
Semihiante  labello  — 

is  as  incomparable ;  not  again  till  the  Florentine  art  of  the 
fifteenth  century  was  the  picture  drawn  with  so  true  and 
tender  a  hand. 

Over  the  Atys  modern  criticism  has  exhausted  itself 
without  any  definite  result.  The  accident  of  its  being  the 
only  Latin  poem  extant  in  the  peculiar  galliambic  metre 
has  combined  with  the  nature  of  the  subject  *  to  induce  a 
tradition  about  it  as  though  it  were  the  most  daring  and  ex- 
traordinary of  Catullus'  poems.  The  truth  is  quite  different. 
It  stands  midway  between  the  lyrics  and  the  idyls  in  being 
a  poem  of  most  studied  and  elaborate  artifice,  in  which 
Catullus  has  chosen,  not  the  statelier  and  more  familiar 
rhythms  of  the  hexameter  or  elegiac,  but  one  of  the  Greek 
lyric  metres,  of  which  he  had  already  introduced  several 
others  into  Latin.  As  a  tour  de  force  in  metrical  form 
it  is  very  remarkable,  and  probably  marks  the  highest  point 
of  Latin  achievement  in  imitation  of  the  more  complex 

*  The  subject  was  quite  a  usual  one  among  the  Alexandrian  poets 
whom  Catullus  read  and  imitated.  Cf.  Anthologia  Palatina,  vii. 
217-220. 


60  Latin  Literature.  [1. 

Greek  metres.  As  a  lyric  poem  it  preserves,  even  in  its 
highly  artificial  structure,  much  of  the  direct  force  and 
simplicity  which  mark  all  Catullus'  best  lyrics ;  that  it  goes 
beyond  this,  or  that  —  as  is  often  repeated  —  it  transcends 
both  the  idyls  and  the  briefer  lyrics  in  sustained  beauty  and 
passion,  cannot  be  held  by  any  sane  judgment. 

How  far  elaboration  could  lead  Catullus  is  shown  in  the 
long  idyllic  poem  on  the  Marriage  of  Peleus  and  Thetis. 
Here  he  entirely  abandons  the  lyric  manner,  and  adventures 
on  a  new  field,  in  which  he  does  not  prove  very  successful. 
The  poem  is  full  of  great  beauties  of  detail ;  but  as  a  whole 
it  is  cloying  without  being  satisfying.  For  a  few  lines 
together  Catullus  can  write  in  hexameter  more  exquisitely 
than  any  other  Latin  poet.  The  description  in  this  piece 
of  the  little  breeze  that  rises  at  dawn,  beginning  Hie  qualis 
flatu  placidum  mare  matutino,  like  the  more  famous  lines  in 
his  other  idyllic  poem  — 

Ut  flos  in  septis  secretum  nascitur  hortis, 
Ignotus  pecori,  nullo  contusus  aratro, 
Quern  mukent  aurae,  fir  mat  sol,  educat  imber  ; 
Multi  ilium  pueri,  multae  optavere  puellae  — 

has  an  intangible  and  inexpressible  beauty  such  as  never 
recurs  in  the  more  mature  art  of  greater  masters.  But 
Catullus  has  no  narrative  gift ;  his  use  of  the  hexameter  is 
confined  to  a  limited  set  of  rhythms  which  in  a  poem  about 
the  length  of  a  book  of  the  Georgics  become  hopelessly 
monotonous ;  and  it  finally  stops,  rather  than  ends,  when 
the  writer  (as  is  already  the  case  with  the  reader)  grows  tired 
of  it.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  poet  who  in  the  lightness 
and  speed  of  his  other  metres  is  unrivalled  in  Latin,  should, 
when  he  attempts  the  hexameter,  be  more  languid  and 
heavy,  not  only  than  his  successors,  but  than  his  con- 
temporaries. Here,  as  in  the  elaborate  imitations  of 
Callimachus  with  which  he  tested  his  command  of  the 
Latin  elegiac,  he  is  weak  because  he  wanders  off  the  true 


V.]  Catullus.  6l 

line,  not  from  any  failure  in  his  own  special  gift,  which  was 
purely  and  simply  lyrical.  When  he  uses  the  elegiac  verse 
to  express  his  own  feeling,  as  in  the  attacks  on  political  or 
personal  enemies,  it  has  the  same  direct  lucidity  (as  of  an 
extraordinarily  gifted  child)  which  is  the  essential  charm  of 
his  lyrics. 

It  is  just  this  quality,  this  clear  and  almost  terrible  sim 
plicity,  that  puts  Catullus  in  a  place  by  himself  among  the 
Latin  poets.  Where  others  labour  in  the  ore  of  thought  and 
gradually  forge  it  out  into  sustained  expression,  he  sees 
with  a  single  glance,  and  does  not  strike  a  second  time. 
His  imperious  lucidity  is  perfectly  unhesitating  in  its  ac- 
tion :  whether  he  is  using  it  for  the  daintiest  flower  of  sen- 
timent— fair  passions  and  bountiful  pities  and  loves  without 
stain  —  or  for  the  expression  of  his  vivid  passions  and  hatreds 
in  some  flagrant  obscenity  or  venomous  insult,  it  is  alike 
straight  and  reckless,  with  no  scruple  and  no  mincing  of 
words ;  in  Mr.  Swinburne's  curiously  true  and  vivid  phrase, 
he  "  makes  mouths  at  our  speech  "  when  we  try  to  follow  him. 

With  the  death  of  Catullus  and  Calvus,  an  era  in  Latin 
poetry  definitely  ends.  Only  thirteen  or  fourteen  years  later 
a  new  era  begins  with  the  appearance  of  Virgil ;  but  this 
small  interval  of  time  is  sufficient  to  mark  the  passage  from 
one  age  —  we  might  almost  say  from  one  civilisation  —  to 
another.  During  these  years  poetry  was  almost  silent,  while 
the  Roman  world  shook  with  continuous  civil  war  and  the 
thunder  of  prodigious  armies.  The  school  of  minor 
Alexandrian  poets  still  indeed  continued ;  the  "  warblers  of 
Euphorion "  with  their  smooth  rhythms  and  elaborate 
finesse  of  workmanship  are  spoken  of  by  Cicero  as  still 
numerous  and  active  ten  years  after  Catullus'  death.  But 
their  artifice  had  lost  the  gloss  of  novelty ;  and  the  unex- 
ampled enthusiasm  which  greeted  the  appearance  of  the 
Eclogues  was  due  less  perhaps  to  their  intrinsic  excellence 
than  to  the  relief  with  which  Roman  poetry  shook  itself  free 
from  the  fetters  of  so  rigorous  and  exhausting  a  convention. 


VK, 

CICERO. 

MEANWHILE,  in  the  last  age  of  the  Republic,  Latin  prose 
had  reached  its  full  splendour  in  the  hands  of  the  most 
copious  and  versatile  master  of  style  whom  the  Graeco- 
Roman  world  had  yet  produced.  The  claims  of  Cicero  to 
a  place  among  the  first  rank  of  Roman  statesmen  have 
been  fiercely  canvassed  by  modern  critics ;  and  both  in 
oratory  and  philosophy  some  excess  of  veneration  once 
paid  to  him  has  been  replaced  by  an  equally  excessive 
depreciation.  The  fault  in  both  estimates  lay  in  the  fact 
that  they  were  alike  based  on  secondary  issues.  Cicero's 
unique  and  imperishable  glory  is  not,  as  he  thought  himself, 
that  of  having  put  down  the  revolutionary  movement  of 
Catiline,  nor,  as  later  ages  thought,  that  of  having  rivalled 
Demosthenes  in  the  Second  Philippic,  or  confuted  atheism 
in  the  De  Natura  Deorum.  It  is  that  he  created  a  lan- 
guage which  remained  for  sixteen  centuries  that  of  the 
civilised  world,  and  used  that  language  to  create  a  style 
which  nineteen  centuries  have  not  replaced,  and  in  some 
respects  have  scarcely  altered.  He  stands  in  prose,  like 
Virgil  in  poetry,  as  the  bridge  between  the  ancient  and 
modern  world.  Before  his  time,  Latin  prose  was,  from  a 
wide  point  of  view,  but  one  among  many  local  ancient 
dialects.  As  it  left  his  hands,  it  had  become  a  universal 
language,  one  which  had  definitely  superseded  all  others, 
Greek  included,  as  the  type  of  civilised  expression. 

62 


VI.]  Cicero.  63 

Thus  the  apparently  obsolete  criticism  which  ranked 
Cicero  together  with  Plato  and  Demosthenes,  if  not  above 
them,  was  based  on  real  facts,  though  it  may  be  now 
apparent  that  it  gave  them  a  wrong  interpretation.  Even 
scholars  may  admit  with  but  slight  reluctance  that  the 
prose  of  the  great  Attic  writers  is,  like  the  sculpture  of 
their  contemporary  artists,  a  thing  remote  from  modern 
life,  requiring  much  training  and  study  for  its  appreciation, 
and  confined  at  the  best  to  a  limited  circle.  But  Ciceronian 
prose  is  practically  the  prose  of  the  human  race ;  not  only 
of  the  Roman  empire  of  the  first  and  second  centuries, 
but  of  Lactantius  and  Augustine,  of  the  mediaeval  Church, 
of  the  earlier  and  later  Renaissance,  and  even  now,  when 
the  Renaissance  is  a  piece  of  past  history,  of  the  modern 
world  to  which  the  Renaissance  was  the  prelude. 

The  life  of  Cicero  as  a  man  of  letters  may  be  divided 
into  four  periods,  which,  though  not  of  course  wholly 
distinct  from  one  another,  may  be  conveniently  treated  as 
separate  for  the  purpose  of  criticism.  The  first  is  that  of 
his  immature  early  writings  —  poems,  treatises  on  rhetoric, 
and  forensic  speeches  —  covering  the  period  from  his  boy- 
hood in  the  Civil  wars,  to  the  first  consulship  of  Pompeius 
and  Crassus,  in  70  B.C.  The  second,  covering  his  life  as 
an  active  statesman  of  the  first  prominence,  begins  with 
the  Verrine  orations  of  that  year,  and  goes  down  to  the 
consulship  of  Julius  Caesar,  in  59  B.C.  These  ten  years 
mark  his  culmination  as  an  orator ;  and  there  is  no  trace 
in  them  of  any  large  literary  work  except  in  the  field  of 
oratory.  In  the  next  year  came  his  exile,  from  which 
indeed  he  returned  within  a  twelvemonth,  but  as  a  broken 
statesman.  From  this  point  to  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
war  in  50  B.C.,  the  third  period  continues  the  record  of  his 
great  speeches ;  but  they  are  no  longer  at  the  old  height, 
nor  do  they  occupy  his  full  energy ;  and  now  he  breaks  new 
ground  in  two  fields  with  works  of  extraordinary  brilliance, 
the  De  Oratore  and  the  De  Republica.  During  the  heat  of 


64  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

the  Civil  war  there  follows  a  period  of  comparative  silence, 
but  for  his  private  correspondence  ;  then  comes  the  fourth 
and  final  period,  perhaps  the  most  brilliant  of  all,  the  four 
years  from  46  B.C.  to  his  death  in  43  B.C.  The  few  speeches 
of  the  years  46  and  45  show  but  the  ghost  of  former 
splendours;  he  was  turning  perforce  to  other  subjects. 
The  political  philosophy  of  the  De  Republica  is  resumed 
in  the  De  Lcgibus ;  the  DC  Oratore  is  continued  by  the 
history  of  Roman  oratory  known  as  the  Brutus.  Then,  as 
if  realising  that  his  true  work  in  life  was  to  mould  his 
native  language  into  a  vehicle  of  abstract  thought,  he  sets 
to  work  with  amazing  swiftness  and  copiousness  to  re- 
produce a  whole  series  of  Greek  philosophical  treatises, 
in  a  style  which,  for  flexibility  and  grace,  recalls  the  Greek 
of  the  best  period  —  the  De  Finibus,  the  Academics,  the 
Tusculans,  the  De  Natura  Deorum,  the  De  Divinatione,  the 
De  Offiriis.  Concurrently  with  these,  he  continues  to  throw 
off  further  manuals  of  the  theory  and  practice  of  oratory ? 
intended  in  the  first  instance  for  the  use  of  the  son  who 
proved  so  thankless  a  pupil,  the  Partitiones  Oratoriae,  the 
Topica,  the  De  Optimo  Genere  Oratorum.  Meanwhile,  the 
Roman  world  had  again  been  plunged  into  civil  war  by  the 
assassination  of  Caesar.  Cicero's  political  influence  was 
no  longer  great,  but  it  was  still  worth  the  while  of  younger 
and  more  unscrupulous  statesmen  to  avail  themselves  of 
his  eloquence  by  assumed  deference  and  adroit  flattery. 
The  series  of  fourteen  speeches  delivered  at  Rome  against 
Marcus  Antonius,  between  September,  44,  and  April,  43 
B.C.,  were  the  last  outburst  of  free  Roman  oratory  before 
the  final  extinction  of  the  Republic.  That  even  at  the 
time  there  was  a  sense  of  their  unreality  —  of  their  being 
rhetorical  exercises  to  interest  the  capital  while  the  real 
issues  of  the  period  were  being  fought  out  elsewhere  —  is 
indicated  by  the  name  that  from  the  first  they  went  under, 
the  Philippics.  In  the  epoch  of  the  Verrines  and  the 
Catilinarians  it  had  not  been  necessary  to  find  titles  for 


VI.]  Cicero.  65 

the  weapons  of  political  warfare  out  of  old  Greek  history. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  this  unreality,  and  of  the  decline  they  show 
in  the  highest  oratorical  qualities,  the  Philippics  still  remain 
a  noble  ruin  of  eloquence. 

Oratory  at  Rome  had,  as  we  have  already  seen,  attained 
a  high  degree  of  perfection  when  Cicero  entered  on  public 
life.  Its  golden  age  was  indeed,  in  the  estimation  of 
some  critics,  already  over;  old  men  spoke  with  admiring 
regret  of  the  speeches  of  the  younger  Scipio  and  of  Gaius 
Gracchus ;  and  the  death  of  the  great  pair  of  friendly 
rivals,  Crassus  and  Antonius,  left  no  one  at  the  moment 
who  could  be  called  their  equal.  But  admirable  as  these 
great  orators  had  been,  there  was  still  room  for  a  higher 
formal  perfection,  a  more  exhaustive  and  elaborate  tech- 
nique, without  any  loss  of  material  qualities.  Closer  and 
more  careful  study  led  the  orators  of  the  next  age  into 
one  of  two  opposed,  or  rather  complementary  styles,  the 
Attic  and  Asiatic;  the  calculated  simplicity  of  the  one 
being  no  less  artificial  than  the  florid  ornament  of  the 
other.  At  an  early  age  Cicero,  with  the  intuition  of  genius, 
realised  that  he  must  not  attach  himself  to  either  school. 
A  fortunate  delicacy  of  health  led  him  to  withdraw  for  two 
years,  at  the  age  of  seven  and  twenty,  from  the  practice 
at  the  bar,  in  which  he  was  already  becoming  famous ; 
and  in  the  schools  of  Athens  and  Rhodes  he  obtained 
a  larger  view  of  his  art,  both  in  theory  and  practice,  and 
returned  to  Rome  to  form,  not  to  follow,  a  style.  Quintus 
Hortensius  Hortalus,  the  foremost  representative  of  the 
Asiatic  school,  was  then  at  the  height  of  his  forensic  repu- 
tation. Within  a  year  or  two  Cicero  was  recognised  as 
at  least  his  equal :  it  is  to  the  honour  of  both,  that  the 
eclipse  of  Hortensius  by  his  younger  rival  brought  no 
jealousy  or  alienation ;  up  to  the  death  of  Hortensius, 
about  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  war,  they  remained  good 
friends.  Years  afterwards  Cicero  inscribed  with  his  name 
the  treatise,  now  lost,  but  made  famous  to  later  ages  by 

F 


66  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

having  been  one  of  the  great  turning-points  in  the  life  of 
St.  Augustine,*  which  he  wrote  in  praise  of  philosophy  as 
an  introduction  to  the  series  of  his  philosophical  works. 

The  years  which  followed  Cicero's  return  from  the  East 
were  occupied,  with  the  single  break  of  his  quaestorship  in 
Sicily,  by  hard  and  continuous  work  at  the  bar.  His 
speeches  of  this  date,  being  non-political,  have  for  the  most 
part  not  been  preserved.  The  two  still  imperfectly  extant, 
the  Pro  Roscio  Comoedo  of  76,  and  the  Pro  Tullio  of 
72  B.C.  ,  form,  together  with  two  other  speeches  dating  from 
before  his  visit  to  the  East,  the  Pro  Quinctio  and  Pro 
Roscio  Amerino,  and,  with  his  juvenile  treatise  on  rhetoric 
known  as  the  De  Inventione,  the  body  of  prose  composition 
which  represents  the  first  of  his  four  periods.  These  early 
speeches  are  carefully  composed  according  to  the  scholastic 
canons  then  in  vogue,  the  hard  legal  style  of  the  older 
courts  alternating  with  passages  of  carefully  executed  arti- 
ficial ornament.  Their  chief  interest  is  one  of  contrast 
with  his  matured  style ;  for  they  show,  no  doubt  with  much 
accuracy,  what  the  general  level  of  oratory  was  out  of  which 
the  great  Ciceronian  eloquence  sprang. 

In  70  B.C.  ,  at  the  age  of  thirty-six,  Cicero  at  last  found 
his  great  chance,  and  seized  it.  The  impeachment  of 
Verres  for  maladministration  in  the  government  of  Sicily 
was  a  political  trial  of  great  constitutional  importance.  It 
was  undertaken  at  the  direct  encouragement  of  Pompeius, 
who  had  entered  on  his  first  or  democratic  consulate,  and 
was  indirectly  a  formidable  attack  both  on  the  oligarchic 
administration  of  the  provinces  and  on  the  senatorian  jury- 
panels,  in  whose  hands  the  Sullan  constitution  had  placed 
the  only  check  upon  misgovernment.  The  defence  of 
Verres  was  undertaken  by  Hortensius ;  the  selection  of 
Cicero  as  chief  counsel  for  the  prosecution  by  the  demo- 
cratic leaders  was  a  public  recognition  of  him  as  the  fore- 
most orator  on  the  Pompeian  side.  He  threw  himself  into 

*  Confess.,  III.  iv. 


VI.]  Cicero.  67 

the  trial  with  all  his  energy.  After  his  opening  speech, 
and  the  evidence  which  followed,  Verres  threw  up  his 
defence  and  went  into  exile.  This,  of  course,  brought  the 
case  to  an  end ;  but  the  cause  turned  on  larger  issues  than 
his  particular  guilt  or  innocence.  The  whole  of  the  material 
prepared  against  him  was  swiftly  elaborated  by  Cicero  into 
five  great  orations,  and  published  as  a  political  document. 
These  orations,  the  Second  Action  against  Verres  as  they 
are  called,  were  at  once  the  most  powerful  attack  yet 
made  on  the  working  of  the  Sullan  constitution,  and  the 
high-water  mark  of  the  earlier  period  of  Cicero's  eloquence. 
It  was  not  till  some  years  later  that  his  oratory  culmi- 
nated ;  but  he  never  excelled  these  speeches  in  richness 
and  copiousness  of  style,  in  ease  and  lucidity  of  exposition, 
and  in  power  of  dealing  with  large  masses  of  material.  He 
at  once  became  an  imposing  political  force ;  perhaps  it 
was  hardly  realised  till  later  how  incapable  that  force  was 
of  going  straight  or  of  bearing  down  opposition.  The  series 
of  political  and  semi-political  speeches  of  the  next  ten 
years,  down  to  his  exile,  represent  for  the  time  the  history 
of  Rome ;  and  together  with  these  we  now  begin  the  series 
of  his  private  letters.  The  year  of  his  praetorship,  66  B.C., 
is  marked  by  the  two  orations  which  are  on  the  whole  his 
greatest,  one  public  and  the  other  private.  The  first,  the 
speech  known  as  the  Pro  Lege  Manilla,  which  should  really 
be  described  as  the  panegyric  of  Pompeius  and  of  the 
Roman  people,  does  not  show  any  profound  appreciation 
of  the  problems  which  then  confronted  the  Republic ;  but 
the  greatness  of  the  Republic  itself  never  found  a  more 
august  interpreter.  The  stately  passage  in  which  Italy  and 
the  subject  provinces  are  called  on  to  bear  witness  to  the 
deeds  of  Pompeius  breathes  the  very  spirit  of  an  imperial 
race.  Throughout  this  and  the  other  great  speeches  of 
the  period  "  the  Roman  People  "  is  a  phrase  that  keeps 
perpetually  recurring  with  an  effect  like  that  of  a  bourdon 
stop.  As  the  eye  glances  down  the  page,  Consul  populi 


68  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

Romani,  Imperium  Populi  Romani,  Fortuna  Popufi  Romani, 
glitter  out  of  the  voluminous  periods  with  a  splendour  that 
hardly  any  other,  words  could  give. 

The  other  great  speech  of  this  year,  Cicero's  defence  of 
Aulus  Cluentius  Habitus  of  Larinum  on  a  charge  of  poison- 
ing, has  in  its  own  style  an  equal  brilliance  of  language. 
The  story  it  unfolds  of  the  ugly  tragedies  of  middle-class 
life  in  the  capital  and  the  provincial  Italian  towns  is  famous 
as  one  of  the  leading  documents  for  the  social  life  of  Rome. 
According  to  Quintilian,  Cicero  confessed  afterwards  that 
his  client  was  not  innocent,  and  that  the  elaborate  and 
impressive  story  which  he  unfolds  with  such  vivid  detail 
was  in  great  part  an  invention  of  his  own.  This  may  be 
only  bar  gossip ;  true  or  false,  his  defence  is  an  extraordi- 
nary masterpiece  of  oratorical  skill. 

The  manner  in  which  Cicero  conducted  a  defence  when 
the  cause  was  not  so  grave  or  so  desperate  is  well  illustrated 
by  a  speech  delivered  four  years  later,  the  Pro  Archia.  The 
case  here  was  one  of  contested  citizenship.  The  defendant, 
one  of  the  Greek  men  of  letters  who  lived  in  great  numbers 
at  Rome,  had  been  for  years  intimate  with  the  literary 
circle  among  the  Roman  aristocracy.  This  intimacy  gained 
him  the  privilege  of  being  defended  by  the  first  of  Roman 
orators,  who  would  hardly,  in  any  other  circumstances, 
have  troubled  himself  with  so  trivial  a  case.  But  the 
speech  Cicero  delivered  is  one  of  the  permanent  glories 
of  Latin  literature.  The  matter  immediately  at  issue  is 
summarily  dealt  with  in  a  few  pages  of  cursory  and  rather 
careless  argument ;  then  the  scholar  lets  himself  go. 
Among  the  many  praises  of  literature  which  great  men  01 
letters  have  delivered,  there  is  hardly  one  more  perfect 
than  this ;  some  of  the  famous  sentences  have  remained 
ever  since  the  abiding  motto  and  blason  of  literature  itself. 
Haec  studio,  adolescentiam  agunt,  senectutem  oblectant,  se- 
c  mi  das  res  ornant,  adversis  perfugium  ac  solatium  praebent, 
delectant  domi,  non  impediunt  forts,  pemoctant  nobiscum, 


VI.]  Cicero.  69 

peregrinantur,  rusticantur ;  and  again,  Nullam  enim  virtus 
aliam  merccdem  laborum  periculorumque  desiderat,  praeter 
hanc  laudis  et  gloriac  ;  qua  guide m  detracta,  iudices,  quid  est 
quod  in  hoc  tarn  exiguo  vitae  curricula,  ettant  brevi,  tantis  nos 
in  laboribus  cxtrceamus  ?  Certe,  si  nihil  animus  pracsentiret 
in  posterum,  et  si  quibus  regionibus  vitae  spatium  circum- 
scriptum  est,  eisdem  omnes  cogitationes  terminaret  suas,  nee 
tantis  se  laboribus frangeret,  neque  tot curis  vigiliisque  angere- 
fur,  neque  toties  de  vita  ipsa  dimicaret.  Strange  words  these 
to  fall  from  a  pleader's  lips  in  the  dusty  atmosphere  of  the 
praetor's  court  !  non  fori,  neque  iudiciali  consuetudine,  says 
Cicero  himself,  in  the  few  words  of  graceful  apology  with 
which  the  speech  ends.  But,  in  truth,  as  he  well  knew,  he 
was  not  speaking  to  the  respectable  gentlemen  on  the 
benches  before  him.  He  addressed  a  larger  audience ; 
posterity,  and  the  civilised  world. 

The  Pro  Archia  foreshadows  already  the  change  which 
was  bound  to  take  place  in  Cicero's  life,  and  which  was 
precipitated  by  his  exile  four  years  later.  More  and  more 
he  found  himself  forced  away  from  the  inner  circle  of 
politics,  and  turned  to  the  larger  field  where  he  had  an 
undisputed  supremacy,  of  political  and  ethical  philosophy 
clothed  in  the  splendid  prose  of  which  he  had  now 
obtained  the  full  mastery.  The  roll  of  his  great  speeches 
is  indeed  continued  after  his  return  from  exile ;  but  even 
in  the  greatest,  the  Pro  Sestio  and  Pro  Caelio  of  56,  or 
the  In  Pisonem  of  55  B.C.,  something  of  the  old  tone  is 
missing ;  it  is  as  though  the  same  voice  spoke  on  a  smaller 
range  of  notes  and  with  less  flexibility  of  cadence.  And 
now  alongside  of  the  speeches  begins  the  great  series  of 
his  works  on  oratory  and  philosophy,  with  the  De  Oratore 
of  55,  and  the  De  Republica  of  54  B.C. 

The  three  books  De  Oratore  are  perhaps  the  most 
finished  examples  of  the  Ciceronian  style.  The  subject 
(which  cannot  be  said  of  all  the  subjects  he  deals  with) 
was  one  of  which,  over  all  its  breadth  and  in  all  its  details, 


70  Latin  Literature.  p. 

he  was  completely  master;  and,  thus  left  unhampered  by 
any  difficulties  with  his  material,  he  could  give  full  scope 
to  his  brilliant  style  and  diction.  The  arrangement  of  the 
work  follows  the  strict  scholastic  divisions ;  but  the  form 
of  dialogue  into  which  it  is  thrown,  and  which  is  managed 
with  really  great  skill,  avoids  the  tediousness  incident  to  a 
systematic  treatise.  The  principal  persons  of  the  dialogue 
are  the  two  great  orators  of  the  preceding  age,  Lucius 
Crassus  and  Marcus  Antonius ;  this  is  only  one  sign  out  of 
many  that  Cicero  was  more  and  more  living  in  a  sort  of 
dream  of  the  past,  that  past  of  his  own  youth  which  was 
still  full  of  traditions  of  the  earlier  Republic. 

The  De  Oratore  was  so  complete  a  masterpiece  that  its 
author  probably  did  not  care  to  weaken  its  effect  by  con- 
tinuing at  the  time  to  bring  out  any  of  the  supplementary 
treatises  on  Roman  oratory  for  which  his  library,  and  still 
more  his  memory,  had  accumulated  immense  quantities  of 
material.  In  the  treatise  De  Republica,  which  was  begun 
in  54  B.C.,  though  not  published  till  three  years  later,  he 
carried  the  achievement  of  Latin  prose  into  a  larger  and 
less  technical  field  —  that  of  the  philosophy  of  politics. 
Again  the  scene  of  the  dialogue  is  laid  in  a  past  age ;  but 
now  he  goes  further  back  than  he  had  done  in  the  De 
Oratore,  to  the  circle  of  the  younger  Scipio.  The  work  was 
received,  when  published,  with  immense  applause ;  but 
its  loss  in  the  Middle  Ages  is  hardly  one  of  those  which 
are  most  seriously  to  be  deplored,  except  in  so  far  as  the 
second  and  fifth  books  may  have  preserved  real  information 
on  the  early  history  of  the  Roman  State  and  the  develop- 
ment of  Roman  jurisprudence.  Large  fragments  were  re- 
covered early  in  the  present  century  from  a  palimpsest, 
itself  incomplete,  on  which  the  work  of  Cicero  had  been 
expunged  to  make  room  for  the  commentary  of  St.  Augus- 
tine on  the  Psalms.  The  famous  Somnium  Scipionis,  with 
which  (in  imitation  of  the  vision  of  Er  in  Plato's  Repub- 
lic) the  work  ended,  has  been  independently  preserved- 


VI.]  Cicero.  71 

Though  it  flagrantly  challenges  comparison  with  the  un- 
equalled original,  it  has,  nevertheless,  especially  in  its  opening 
and  closing  passages,  a  grave  dignity  which  is  purely  Roman, 
and  characteristically  Ciceronian.  Perhaps  some  of  the 
elaborate  fantasies  of  De  Quincey  (himself  naturally  a 
Ciceronian,  and  saturated  in  the  rhythms  and  cadences  of 
the  finest  Latin  prose)  are  the  nearest  parallel  to  this 
piece  in  modern  English.  The  opening  words  of  Scipio's 
narrative,  Cum  in  Africam  venissem,  Manio  Manilio  consult 
ad  quartam  legionem  tribunus,  come  on  the  ear  like  the 
throb  of  a  great  organ;  and  here  and  there  through  the 
piece  come  astonishing  phrases  of  the  same  organ-music : 
Ostendebat  autem  Karthaginem  de  excelso  et plena  stellarum 
inlustri  et  claro  quodam  loco.  .  .  .  Quis  in  reliquis  orientis 
aut  obeuntis  softs,  ultimis  aut  aquilonis  austrive  partibus, 
tuum  nomen  audiet  ?  .  .  .  Deum  te  igitur  scito  esse,  siquidem 
deus  est,  qui  viget,  qui  sentit,  qui  me  mini t,  qui  provide  t — 
hardly  from  the  lips  of  Virgil  himself  does  the  noble  Latin 
speech  issue  with  a  purer  or  a  more  majestic  flow. 

During  the  next  few  years  the  literary  activity  of  Cicero 
suffered  a  check.  The  course  of  politics  at  Rome  filled 
him  with  profound  disappointment  and  disgust.  Public 
issues,  it  became  more  and  more  plain,  waited  for  their 
determination,  not  on  the  senate-house  or  the  forum,  but 
on  the  sword.  The  shameful  collapse  of  his  defence  of 
Milo  in  52  B.C.  must  have  stung  a  vanity  even  as  well- 
hardened  as  Cicero's  to  the  quick;  and  his  only  important 
abstract  work  of  this  period,  the  De  Legibus,  seems  to  have 
been  undertaken  with  little  heart  and  carried  out  without 
either  research  or  enthusiasm.  His  proconsulate  in  Cilicia 
in  51  and  50  B.C.  was  occupied  with  the  tedious  details  of 
administration  and  petty  warfare ;  six  months  after  his 
return  the  Civil  war  broke  out,  and,  until  permitted  to 
return  to  Rome  by  Caesar  in  the  autumn  of  47  B.C.,  he  was 
practically  an  exile,  away  from  his  beloved  Rome  and  his 
more  beloved  library,  hating  and  despising  the  ignorant 


•J2  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

Incompetence  of  his  colleagues,  and  looking  forward  with 
almost  equal  terror  to  the  conclusive  triumph  of  his  own 
or  the  opposite  party.  When  at  last  he  returned,  his  mind 
was  still  agitated  and  unsettled.  The  Pompeian  party  held 
Africa  and  Spain  with  large  armies;  their  open  threats 
that  all  who  had  come  to  terms  with  Caesar  would  be 
proscribed  as  public  enemies  were  not  calculated  to  restore 
Cicero's  confidence.  The  decisive  battle  of  Thapsus  put 
an  end  to  this  uncertainty;  and  meanwhile  Cicero  had 
resumed  work  on  his  De  Legibus,  and  had  once  more 
returned  to  the  study  of  oratory  in  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting of  his  writings,  the  Brutus  de  Claris  Oratoribus,  in 
which  he  gives  a  vivid  and  masterly  sketch  of  the  history 
of  Roman  oratory  down  to  his  own  time,  filled  with  histori- 
cal matter  and  admirable  sketches  of  character. 

The  spring  of  45  B.C.  brought  with  it  two  events  of 
momentous  importance  to  Cicero  :  the  final  collapse  of  the 
armed  opposition  to  Caesar  at  the  battle  of  Munda,  and 
the  loss,  by  the  death  of  his  daughter  Tullia,  of  the  one 
deep  affection  of  his  inner  life.  Henceforth  it  seemed  as 
if  politics  had  ceased  to  exist,  even  had  he  the  heart  to 
interest  himself  in  them.  He  fell  back  more  completely 
than  ever  upon  philosophy;  and  the  year  that  followed 
(45-44  B.C.)  is,  in  mere  quantity  of  literary  production,  as 
well  as  in  the  abiding  effect  on  the  world  of  letters  of  the 
work  he  then  produced,  the  annus  mirabilis  of  his  life. 
Two  at  least  of  the  works  of  this  year,  the  De  Gloria  and 
the  De  Virtutibus,  have  perished,  though  the  former  survived 
long  enough  to  be  read  by  Petrarch;  but  there  remain 
extant  (besides  one  or  two  other  pieces  of  slighter  im- 
portance) the  De  Finibus,  the  Academics,  the  Tusculans, 
the  De  Natura  Deorum,  the  De  Divinatione,  the  De  Fato, 
the  De  Officiis,  and  the  two  exquisite  essays  De  Senectute 
and  De  Amicitia. 

It  is  the  work  of  this  astonishing  year  which,  on  the 
whole,  represents  Cicero's  permanent  contribution  to  letter? 


VI.]  Cicero.  73 

And  to  human  thought.  If  his  philosophy  seems  now  to 
have  exhausted  its  influence,  it  is  because  it  has  in  great 
measure  been  absorbed  into  the  fabric  of  civilised  society. 
Ciceronianism,  at  the  period  of  the  Renaissance,  and  even 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  meant  more  than  the  impulse 
towards  florid  and  sumptuous  style.  It  meant  all  that  is 
conveyed  by  the  Latin  word  humanitas ;  the  title  of  "  the 
humaner  letters,"  by  which  Latin  was  long  designated  in 
European  universities,  indicated  that  in  the  great  Latin 
writers  —  in  Cicero  and  Virgil  pre-eminently  —  a  higher  type 
of  human  life  was  to  be  found  than  existed  in  the  literature 
of  other  countries :  as  though  at  Rome,  and  in  the  first 
century  before  Christ,  the  political  and  social  environment 
had  for  the  first  time  produced  men  such  as  men  would 
wish  to  be,  at  all  events  for  the  ideals  of  Western  Europe. 
To  less  informed  or  less  critical  ages  than  our  own,  the 
absolute  contribution  of  Cicero  to  ethics  and  metaphysics 
seemed  comparable  to  that  of  the  great  Greek  thinkers ; 
the  De  Natura  Deorum  was  taken  as  a  workable  argument 
against  atheism,  and  the  thin  and  wire-drawn  discussions  of 
the  Academics  were  studied  with  an  attention  hardly  given 
to  the  founder  of  the  Academy.  When  a  sounder  historical 
method  brought  these  writings  into  their  real  proportion, 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  scale  should  swing  violently  to 
the  other  side ;  and  for  a  time  no  language  was  too  strong 
in  which  to  attack  the  reputation  of  the  "  phrase-maker," 
the  "journalist,"  whose  name  had  once  dominated  Europe. 
The  violence  of  this  attack  has  now  exhausted  itself;  and 
we  may  be  content,  without  any  exaggerated  praise  or 
blame,  to  note  the  actual  historical  effect  of  these  writings 
through  many  ages,  and  the  actual  impression  made  on 
the  world  by  the  type  of  character  which  they  embodied 
and,  in  a  sense,  created.  In  this  view,  Cicero  represents 
a  force  that  no  historian  can  neglect,  and  the  importance 
of  which  it  is  not  easy  to  over-estimate.  He  did  for  the 
Empire  and  the  Middle  Ages  what  Lucretius,  with  his 


74  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

far  greater  philosophic  genius,  totally  failed  to  do  —  created 
forms  of  thought  in  which  the  life  of  philosophy  grew,  and 
a  body  of  expression  which  alone  made  its  growth  in  the 
Latin-speaking  world  possible ;  and  to  that  world  he  pre- 
sented a  political  ideal  which  profoundly  influenced  the 
whole  course  of  European  history  even  up  to  the  French 
Revolution.  Without  Cicero,  the  Middle  Ages  would  not 
have  had  Augustine  or  Aquinas ;  but,  without  him,  the 
movement  which  annulled  the  Middle  Ages  would  have 
had  neither  Mirabeau  nor  Pitt. 

The  part  of  Cicero's  work  which  the  present  age 
probably  finds  the  most  interesting,  and  the  interest  of 
which  is,  in  the  nature  of  things,  perennial,  has  been  as  yet 
left  unmentioned.  It  consists  of  the  collections  of  his 
private  letters  from  the  year  68  B.C.  to  within  a  few  months 
of  his  death.  The  first  of  these  contains  his  letters  to  the 
intimate  friend  and  adviser,  Titus  Pomponius  Atticus,  with 
whom,  when  they  were  not  both  in  Rome,  he  kept  up 
a  constant  and  an  extremely  intimate  correspondence. 
Atticus,  whose  profession,  as  far  as  he  had  one,  was  that 
of  a  banker,  was  not  only  a  man  of  wide  knowledge  and 
great  political  sagacity,  but  a  refined  critic  and  an  author 
of  considerable  merit.  The  publishing  business,  which  he 
conducted  as  an  adjunct  to  his  principal  profession,  made 
him  of  great  use  to  Cicero  by  the  rapid  multiplication  in 
his  workshops  of  copies  of  the  speeches  or  other  writings 
for  which  there  was  an  immediate  public  demand.  But 
the  intimacy  was  much  more  than  that  of  the  politician 
and  his  confidential  adviser,  or  the  author  and  his  publisher. 
Cicero  found  in  him  a  friend  with  whom  he  could  on  all 
occasions  be  perfectly  frank  and  at  his  ease,  and  on  whose 
sober  judgment  and  undemonstrative,  but  perfectly  sincere, 
attachment  his  own  excitable  and  emotionaJ  nature  could 
always  throw  itself  without  reserve.  About  four  hundred 
of  the  letters  were  published  by  Atticus  several  years  after 
Cicero's  death.  It  must  always  be  a  source  of  regret  that 


VI.]  Cicero.  75 

he  could  not,  or,  at  all  events,  did  not,  publish  the  other 
half  of  the  correspondence ;  many  of  the  letters,  especially 
the  brief  confidential  notes,  have  the  tantalising  interest  of 
a  conversation  where  one  of  the  speakers  is  inaudible. 
It  is  the  letters  to  Atticus  that  place  Cicero  at  the  head  of 
all  epistolary  stylists.  We  should  hardly  guess  from  the 
more  formal  and  finished  writings  what  the  real  man  was, 
with  his  excitable  Italian  temperament,  his  swift  power  of 
phrase,  his  sensitive  affections. 

The  other  large  collection  of  Cicero's  letters,  the 
Epistolae  ad  Familiares,  was  preserved  and  edited  by  his 
secretary,  Tiro.  They  are,  of  course,  of  very  unequal 
value  and  interest.  Some  are  merely  formal  documents ; 
others,  like  those  to  his  wife  and  family  in  book  xiv.,  are 
as  intimate  and  as  valuable  as  any  we  possess.  The  two 
smaller  collections,  the  letters  to  his  brother  Quintus,  and 
those  to  Marcus  Brutus,  of  which  a  mere  fragment  is 
extant,  are  of  little  independent  value.  The  Epistolae 
ad  Familiares  include,  besides  Cicero's  own  letters,  a 
large  number  of  letters  addressed  to  him  by  various 
correspondents ;  a  whole  book,  and  that  not  the  least 
interesting,  consists  of  those  sent  to  him  during  his  Cilician 
proconsulate  by  the  brilliant  and  erratic  young  aristocrat, 
Marcus  Caelius  Rufus,  who  was  the  next  successor  of 
Catullus  as  the  favoured  lover  of  Clodia  Quadrantaria. 
Full  of  the  political  and  social  gossip  of  the  day,  they  are 
written  in  a  curiously  slipshod  but  energetic  Latin,  which 
brings  before  us  even  more  vividly  than  Cicero's  own  the 
familiar  language  of  the  upper  classes  at  Rome  at  the  time. 
Another  letter,  which  can  hardly  be  passed  over  in  silence 
in  any  history  of  Latin  literature,  is  the  noble  message  of 
condolence  to  Cicero  on  the  death  of  his  beloved  Tullia, 
by  the  statesman  and  jurist,  Servius  Sulpicius  Rufus,  who 
carried  on  in  this  age  the  great  tradition  of  the  Scaevolae. 

It  is  due  to  these  priceless  collections  of  letters,  more 
than  to  any  other  single  thing,  that  our  knowledge  of  the 


76  Latin  Literature.  p. 

Ciceronian  age  is  so  complete  and  so  intimate.  At  every 
point  they  reinforce  and  vitalise  the  more  elaborate  literary 
productions  of  the  period.  The  art  of  letter- writing  sud- 
denly rose  in  Cicero's  hands  to  its  full  perfection.  It  fell 
to  the  lot  of  no  later  Roman  to  have  at  once  such  mastery 
over  familiar  style,  and  contemporary  events  of  such 
engrossing  and  ever-changing  interest  on  which  to  exercise 
it.  All  the  great  letter- writers  of  more  modern  ages  have 
more  or  less,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  followed  the 
Ciceronian  model.  England  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  peculiarly  rich  in  them ;  but  Horace  Walpole,  Cowper, 
Gray  himself,  would  willingly  have  acknowledged  Cicero 
as  their  master. 

Caesar's  assassination  on  the  i5th  of  March,  44  B.C., 
plunged  the  political  situation  into  a  worse  chaos  than  had 
ever  been  reached  during  the  civil  wars.  For  several 
months  it  was  not  at  all  plain  how  things  were  tending, 
or  what  fresh  combinations  were  to  rise  out  of  the  welter 
in  which  a  vacillating  and  incapable  senate  formed  the 
only  constitutional  rallying-point.  In  spite  of  all  his  long- 
cherished  delusions,  Cicero  must  have  known  that  this  way 
no  hope  lay ;  when  at  last  he  flung  himself  into  the  conflict, 
and  broke  away  from  his  literary  seclusion  to  make  the 
fierce  series  of  attacks  upon  Antonius  which  fill  the  winter 
of  44-43  B.C.,  he  may  have  had  some  vague  hopes  from 
the  Asiatic  legions  which  once  before,  in  Sulla's  hands,  had 
checked  the  revolution,  and  some  from  the  power  of  his 
own  once  unequalled  eloquence;  but  on  the  whole  he 
seems  to  have  undertaken  the  contest  chiefly  from  the 
instinct  that  had  become  a  tradition,  and  from  his  deep 
personal  repugnance  to  Antonius.  The  fourteen  Philippics 
add  little  to  his  reputation  as  an  orator,  and  still  less  to  his 
credit  as  a  statesman.  The  old  watchwords  are  there, 
but  their  unreality  is  now  more  obvious ;  the  old  rhetorical 
skill,  but  more  coarsely  and  less  effectively  used.  The  last 
Philippic  was  delivered  to  advocate  a  public  thanksgiving 


VI.]  Cicero.  77 

for  the  victory  gained  over  Antonius  by  the  consuls,  Hirtius 
and  Pansa.  A  month  later,  the  consuls  were  both  dead, 
and  their  two  armies  had  passed  into  the  control  of  the 
young  Octavianus.  In  autumn  the  triumvirate  was  consti- 
tuted, with  an  armed  force  of  forty  legions  behind  it.  The 
proscription  lists  were  issued  in  November.  On  the  7th 
of  December,  after  some  aimless  wandering  that  hardly 
was  a  serious  effort  to  escape,  Cicero  was  overtaken  near 
Formiae  by  a  small  party  of  Antonian  troops.  He  was 
killed,  and  his  head  sent  to  Rome  and  displayed  in  the 
senate-house.  There  was  nothing  left  for  which  he  could 
have  wished  to  live.  In  the  five  centuries  of  the  Republic 
there  never  had  been  a  darker  time  for  Rome.  Cicero 
had  outlived  almost  all  the  great  men  of  his  age.  The 
newer  generation,  so  far  as  they  had  revealed  themselves, 
were  of  a  type  from  which  those  who  had  inherited  the 
great  traditions  of  the  Republic  shrank  with  horror. 
Caesar  Octavianus,  the  future  master  of  the  world,  was  a 
delicate  boy  of  twenty,  already  an  object  of  dislike  and  dis- 
trust to  nearly  all  his  allies.  Virgil,  a  poet  still  voiceless 
was  twenty-seven. 


vrc 

PROSE  OF  THE   CICERONIAN  AGE  :     CAESAR  AND   SALLUST. 

FERTILE  as  the  Ciceronian  age  was  in  authorship  of  many 
kinds,  there  was  only  one  person  in  it  whose  claim  to  be 
placed  in  an  equal  rank  with  Cicero  could  ever  be  seriously 
entertained ;  and  this  was,  strangely  enough,  one  who  was 
as  it  were  only  a  man  of  letters  by  accident,  and  whose 
literary  work  is  but  among  the  least  of  his  titles  to  fame  — 
Julius  Caesar  himself.  That  anything  written  by  that 
remarkable  man  must  be  interesting  and  valuable  in  a  high 
degree  is  obvious ;  but  the  combination  of  literary  power 
of  the  very  first  order  with  his  unparalleled  military  and 
political  genius  is  perhaps  unique  in  history. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  regrettable  losses  in  Latin  literature 
that  Caesar's  speeches  and  letters  have  almost  completely 
perished.  Of  the  latter  several  collections  were  made  after 
his  death,  and  were  extant  in  the  second  century ;  but  none 
are  now  preserved,  except  a  few  brief  notes  to  Cicero,  of 
which  copies  were  sent  by  him  at  the  time  to  Atticus.  The 
fragments  of  his  speeches  are  even  less  considerable ;  yet, 
according  to  the  unanimous  testimony  both  of  contemporary 
and  of  later  critics,  they  were  unexcelled  in  that  age  of  great 
oratory.  He  used  the  Latin  language  with  a  purity  and 
distinction  that  no  one  else  could  equal.  And  along  with 
this  quality,  the  mira  elegantia  of  Quintilian,  his  oratory 
had  some  kind  of  severe  magnificence  which  we  can  partly 

78 


VII.]  Caesar.  79 

guess  at  from  his  extant  writings  —  magnified  et  generosa, 
says  Cicero ;  facultas  dicendi  imperatoria  is  the  phrase  of 
a  later  and  able  critic. 

Of  Caesar's  other  lost  writings  little  need  be  said.  In 
youth,  like  most  of  his  contemporaries,  he  wrote  poems, 
including  a  tragedy,  of  which  Tacitus  drily  observes  that 
they  were  not  better  than  those  of  Cicero.  A  grammatical 
treatise,  De  Analogia,  was  composed  by  him  during  one 
of  his  long  journeys  between  Northern  Italy  and  the 
head-quarters  of  his  army  in  Gaul  during  his  proconsulate. 
A  work  on  astronomy,  apparently  written  in  connection 
with  his  reform  of  the  calendar,  two  pamphlets  attacking 
Cato,  and  a  collection  of  apophthegms,  have  also  dis- 
appeared. But  we  possess  what  were  by  far  the  most 
important  of  his  writings,  his  famous  memoirs  of  the  Gallic 
and  Civil  Wars. 

The  seven  books  of  Commentaries  on  the  Gallic  War 
were  written  in  Caesar's  winter-quarters  in  Gaul,  after  the 
capture  of  Alesia  and  the  final  suppression  of  the  Arvernian 
revolt.  They  were  primarily  intended  to  serve  an  immediate 
political  purpose,  and  are  indeed  a  defence,  framed  with 
the  most  consummate  skill,  of  the  author's  whole  Gallic 
policy  and  of  his  constitutional  position.  That  Caesar  was 
able  to  do  this  without,  so  far  as  can  be  judged,  violating,  or 
even  to  any  large  degree  suppressing  facts,  does  equal 
credit  to  the  clearsightedness  of  his  policy  and  to  his 
extraordinary  literary  power.  From  first  to  last  there  is  not 
a  word  either  of  self-laudation  or  of  innuendo ;  yet  at  the 
end  we  find  that,  by  the  use  of  the  simplest  and  most 
lucid  narration,  in  which  hardly  a  fact  or  a  detail  can  be 
controverted,  Caesar  has  cleared  his  motives  and  justified 
his  conduct  with  a  success  the  more  complete  because  his 
tone  is  so  temperate  and  seemingly  so  impartial.  An  officer 
of  his  staff  who  was  with  him  during  that  winter,  and  who 
afterwards  added  an  eighth  book  to  the  Commentaries 
to  complete  the  history  of  the  Gallic  proconsulate,  has 


8o  Latin  Literature.  [1. 

recorded  the  ease  and  swiftness  with  which  the  work 
was  written.  Caesar  issued  it  under  the  unpretending 
name  of  Commentarii —  "notes" — on  the  events  of  his 
campaigns,  which  might  be  useful  as  materials  for  history ; 
but  there  was  no  exaggeration  in  the  splendid  compliment 
paid  it  a  few  years  later  by  Cicero,  that  no  one  in  his  senses 
would  think  of  recasting  a  work  whose  succinct,  perspicuous, 
and  brilliant  style  —  pura  et  inlustris  brevitas  —  has  been  the 
model  and  the  despair  of  later  historians. 

The  three  books  of  Commentaries  on  the  Civil  War  show 
the  same  merits  in  a  much  less  marked  degree.  They  were 
not  published  in  Caesar's  lifetime,  and  do  not  seem  to 
have  received  from  him  any  close  or  careful  revision.  The 
literary  incompetence  of  the  Caesarian  officers  into  whose 
hands  they  fell  after  his  death,  and  one  or  more  of  whom 
must  be  responsible  for  their  publication,  is  sufficiently 
evident  from  their  own  awkward  attempts  at  continuing 
them  in  narratives  of  the  Alexandrine,  African,  and  Spanish 
campaigns ;  and  whether  from  the  carelessness  of  the 
original  editors  or  from  other  reasons,  the  text  is  in  a  most 
deplorable  condition.  Yet  this  is  not  in  itself  sufficient 
to  account  for  many  positive  misstatements.  Either  the 
editors  used  a  very  free  hand  in  altering  the  rough  manu- 
script, or  —  which  is  not  in  itself  unlikely,  and  is  borne  out 
by  other  facts  —  Caesar's  own  prodigious  memory  and 
incomparable  perspicuity  became  impaired  in  those  five 
years  of  all  but  superhuman  achievement,  when,  with  the 
whole  weight  of  the  civilised  world  on  his  shoulders,  feebly 
served  by  second-rate  lieutenants  and  hampered  at  every 
turn  by  the  open  or  passive  opposition  of  nearly  the  whole 
of  the  trained  governing  classes,  he  conquered  four  great 
Roman  armies,  secured  Egypt  and  Upper  Asia  and  an- 
nexed Numidia  to  the  Republic,  carried  out  the  unifica- 
tion of  Italy,  re-established  public  order  and  public  credit, 
and  left  at  his  death  the  foundations  of  the  Empire  securely 
laid  for  his  successor. 


VII.]  Caesar 's  Officers.  81 

The  loyal  and  capable  officer,  Aulus  Hirtius  (who  after- 
wards became  consul,  and  was  killed  in  battle  before 
Mutina  a  year  after  Caesar's  murder),  did  his  best  to 
supplement  his  master's  narrative.  He  seems  to  have  been 
a  well-educated  man,  but  without  any  particular  literary 
capacity.  It  was  uncertain,  even  to  the  careful  research  of 
Suetonius,  whether  the  narrative  of  the  campaigns  in  Egypt 
and  Pontus,  known  as  the  Bellum  Alexandrinum,  was  written 
by  him  or  by  another  officer  of  Caesar's,  Gaius  Oppius. 
The  books  on  the  campaigns  of  Africa  and  Spain  which 
follow  are  by  different  hands :  the  former  evidently  by 
some  subaltern  officer  who  took  part  in  the  war,  and  very 
interesting  as  showing  the  average  level  of  intelligence  and 
culture  among  Roman  officers  of  the  period ;  the  latter  by 
another  author  and  in  very  inferior  Latin,  full  of  grammatical 
solecisms  and  popular  idioms  oddly  mixed  up  with  epic 
phrases  from  Ennius,  who  was  still,  it  must  be  remembered, 
the  great  Latin  school-book.  It  is  these  curious  fragments 
of  history  which  more  than  anything  else  help  us  to  under- 
stand the  rapid  decay  of  Latin  prose  after  the  golden 
period.  Under  the  later  Republic  the  educated  class  and 
the  governing  class  had,  broadly  speaking,  been  the  same. 
The  Civil  wars,  in  effect,  took  administration  away  from 
their  hands,  transferring  it  to  the  new  official  class,  of  which 
these  subalterns  of  Caesar's  represent  the  type ;  and  this 
change  was  confirmed  by  the  Empire.  The  result  was  a 
sudden  and  long-continued  divorce  between  political  activity 
on  one  hand  and  the  profession  of  letters  on  the  other. 
For  a  century  after  the  establishment  of  the  Empire  the 
aristocracy,  which  had  produced  the  great  literature  of  the 
Republic,  remained  forcibly  or  sullenly  silent ;  and  the  new 
hierarchy  was  still  at  the  best  only  half  educated.  The 
professional  man  of  letters  was  at  first  fostered  and  sub- 
sidised ;  but  even  before  the  death  of  Augustus  State 
patronage  of  literature  had  fallen  into  abeyance,  while  the 
cultured  classes  fell  more  and  more  back  on  the  use  of 


82  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

Greek.  The  varying  fortunes  of  this  struggle  between 
Greek  and  literary  Latin  as  it  had  been  formed  under  the 
Republic,  belong  to  a  later  period :  at  present  we  must 
return  to  complete  a  general  survey  of  the  prose  of  the 
Ciceronian  age. 

Historical  writing  at  Rome,  as  we  have  seen,  had  hitherto 
been  in  the  form  either  of  annals  or  memoirs.  The  latter 
were,  of  course,  rather  materials  for  history  than  history 
itself,  even  when  they  were  not  excluded  from  Quintilian's 
famous  definition  of  history  *  by  being  composed  primarily 
as  political  pamphlets.  The  former  had  so  far  been 
attempted  on  too  large  a  scale,  and  with  insufficient  equip- 
ment either  of  research  or  style,  to  attain  any  permanent 
merit.  In  the  ten  years  after  Caesar's  death  Latin  history 
was  raised  to  a  higher  level  by  the  works  of  Sallust,  the  first 
scientific  historian  whom  Italy  had  produced. 

Gaius  Sallustius  Crispus  of  Amiternum  in  Central  Italy 
belonged  to  that  younger  generation  of  which  Marcus 
Antonius  and  Marcus  Caelius  Rufus  were  eminent  examples. 
Clever  and  dissipated,  they  revolted  alike  from  the  severe 
traditions  and  the  narrow  class  prejudices  of  the  con- 
stitutional party,  and  Caesar  found  in  them  enthusiastic,  if 
somewhat  imprudent  and  untrustworthy,  supporters.  Sal- 
lust  was  expelled  from  the  senate  just  before  the  outbreak 
of  the  Civil  war ;  was  reinstated  by  Caesar,  and  entrusted 
with  high  posts  in  Illyria  and  Italy ;  and  was  afterwards 
sent  by  him  to  administer  Africa  with  the  rank  of  proconsul. 
There  he  accumulated  a  large  fortune,  and,  after  Caesar's 
death,  retired  to  private  life  in  his  beautiful  gardens  on  the 
Quirinal,  and  devoted  himself  to  historical  study.  The 
largest  and  most  important  of  his  works,  the  five  books  of 
Historiae,  covering  a  period  of  about  ten  years  from  the 
death  of  Sulla,  is  only  extant  in  inconsiderable  fragments ; 
but  his  two  monographs  on  the  Jugurthine  war  and  the 

*  Historia  tcribitur  ad  narrandum  non  ad  probandum :  Inst.  Or., 
X.i.31. 


VII.]  Sallust.  83 

Catilinarian  conspiracy,  which  have  been  preserved,  place 
him  beyond  doubt  in  the  first  rank  of  Roman  historians. 

Sallust  took  Thucydides  as  his  principal  literary  model. 
His  reputation  has  no  doubt  suffered  by  the  comparison 
which  this  choice  makes  inevitable;  and  though  Quintilian 
did  not  hesitate  to  claim  for  him  a  substantial  equality  with 
the  great  Athenian,  no  one  would  now  press  the  parallel, 
except  in  so  far  as  Sallust's  formal  treatment  of  his 
subject  affords  interesting  likenesses  or  contrasts  with 
the  Thucydidean  manner.  In  his  prefatory  remarks,  his 
elaborately  conceived  and  executed  speeches,  his  reflec- 
tions on  character,  and  his  terse  method  of  narration, 
Sallust  closely  follows  the  manner  of  his  master.  He 
even  copies  his  faults  in  a  sort  of  dryness  of  style  and 
an  excessive  use  of  antithesis.  But  we  cannot  feel,  in 
reading  the  Catiline  or  the  Jugurtha,  that  it  is  the  work 
of  a  writer  of  the  very  first  intellectual  power.  Yet 
the  two  historians  have  this  in  common,  which  is  not  bor- 
rowed by  the  later  from  the  earlier,  —  that  they  approach 
and  handle  their  subject  with  the  mature  mind,  the  insight 
and  common  sense  of  the  grown  man,  where  their  prede- 
cessors had  been  comparatively  like  children.  Both  are 
totally  free  from  superstition ;  neither  allows  his  own 
political  views  to  obscure  his  vision  of  facts,  of  men  as  they 
were  and  events  as  they  happened.  The  respect  for  truth, 
which  is  the  first  virtue  of  the  historian,  is  stronger  in 
Sallust  than  in  any  of  his  more  brilliant  successors.  His 
ideal  in  the  matter  of  research  and  documentary  evidence 
was,  for  that  age,  singularly  high.  In  the  Catiline  he  writes 
very  largely  from  direct  personal  knowledge  of  men  and 
events  ;  but  the  Jugurtha,  which  deals  with  a  time  two  gen- 
erations earlier  than  the  date  of  its  composition,  involved 
wide  inquiry  and  much  preparation.  He  had  translations 
made  from  original  documents  in  the  Carthaginian  language  ; 
and  a  complete  synopsis  of  Roman  history,  for  reference 
during  the  progress  of  his  work,  was  compiled  for  him  by 


84  Latin  Literature.  [1. 

a  Greek  secretary.  Such  pains  were  seldom  taken  by  a 
Latin  historian. 

The  last  of  the  Ciceronians,  Sallust  is  also  in  a  sense  the 
first  of  the  imperial  prose-writers.  His  style,  compressed, 
rhetorical,  and  very  highly  polished,  is  in  strong  contrast 
to  the  graceful  and  fluid  periods  which  were  then,  and  for 
some  time  later  continued  to  be,  the  predominant  fashion, 
and  foreshadows  the  manner  of  Seneca  or  Tacitus.  His 
archaism  in  the  use  of  pure  Latin,  and,  alongside  of  it,  his 
free  adoption  of  Grecisms,  are  the  first  open  sign  of  two 
movements  which  profoundly  affected  the  prose  of  the 
earlier  and  later  empire.  The  acrid  critic  of  the  Augustan 
age,  Asinius  Pollio,  accused  him  of  having  had  collections 
of  obsolete  words  and  phrases  made  for  his  use  out  of  Cato 
and  the  older  Roman  writers.  For  a  short  time  he  was 
eclipsed  by  the  brilliant  and  opulent  style  of  Livy;  but 
Livy  formed  no  school,  and  Sallust  on  the  whole  remained 
in  the  first  place.  The  line  of  Martial,  primus  Romano, 
Crispus  in  historia,  expresses  the  settled  opinion  held  of 
him  down  to  the  final  decay  of  letters ;  and  even  in  the 
Middle  Ages  he  remained  widely  read  and  highly  esteemed. 

Contemporary  with  Sallust  in  this  period  of  transition 
between  the  Ciceronian  and  the  Augustan  age  is  Cornelius 
Nepos  (circ.  99-24  B.C.).  In  earlier  life  he  was  one  of  the 
circle  of  Catullus,  and  after  Cicero's  death  was  one  of  the 
chief  friends  of  Atticus,  of  whom  a  brief  biography,  which 
he  wrote  after  Atticus'  death,  is  still  extant.  Unlike  Sallust, 
Nepos  never  took  part  in  public  affairs,  but  carried  on 
throughout  a  long  life  the  part  of  a  man  of  letters,  honest 
and  kindly,  but  without  any  striking  originality  or  ability. 
In  him  we  are  on  the  outer  fringe  of  pure  literature ;  and 
it  is  no  doubt  purposely  that  Quintilian  wholly  omits  him 
from  the  list  of  Roman  historians.  Of  his  numerous  writ- 
ings on  history,  chronology,  and  grammar,  we  only  possess  a 
fragment  of  one,  his  collection  of  Roman  and  foreign  biogra- 
phies, entitled  De  Fin's  Illustribus.  Of  this  work  there 


VII.]  Nepos  and   Varro.  85 

is  extant  one  complete  section,  De  Excellentibus  Ducibus 
Exterarum  Gentium,  and  two  lives  from  another  section, 
those  of  Atticus  and  the  younger  Cato.  The  accident  of 
their  convenient  length  and  the  simplicity  of  their  language 
has  made  them  for  generations  a  common  school-book  for 
beginners  in  Latin ;  were  it  not  for  this,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  Nepos,  like  the  later  epitomators,  Eutropius  or 
Aurelius  Victor,  would  be  hardly  known  except  to  pro- 
fessional scholars,  and  perhaps  only  to  be  read  in  the  pages 
of  some  Corpus  Scriptorum  Romanorum.  The  style  of 
these  little  biographies  is  unpretentious,  and  the  language 
fairly  pure,  though  without  any  great  command  of  phrase. 
A  theory  was  once  held  that  what  we  possess  is  merely  a 
later  epitome  from  the  lost  original.  But  for  this  there  is 
no  rational  support.  The  language  and  treatment,  such  as 
they  are  (and  they  do  not  sink  to  the  level  of  the  histories 
of  the  African  and  Spanish  wars),  are  of  this,  and  not  of  a 
later  age,  and  quite  consonant  with  the  good-natured  con- 
tempt which  Nepos  met  at  the  hands  of  later  Roman  critics. 
The  chief  interest  of  the  work  is  perhaps  the  clearness  with 
which  it  enforces  the  truth  we  are  too  apt  to  forget,  that 
the  great  writers  were  in  their  own  age,  as  now,  unique, 
and  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  widely  diffused  level 
of  high  literary  excellence. 

As  remote  from  literature  in  the  higher  sense  were  the 
innumerable  writings  of  the  Ciceronian  age  on  science,  art, 
antiquities,  grammar,  rhetoric,  and  a  hundred  miscellaneous 
subjects,  which  are,  for  the  most  part,  known  only  from 
notices  in  the  writings  of  later  commentators  and  encyclo- 
pedists. Foremost  among  the  voluminous  authors  of  this 
class  was  the  celebrated  antiquarian,  Marcus  Terentius 
Varro,  whose  long  and  laborious  life,  reaching  from  two 
years  after  the  death  of  the  elder  Cato  till  the  final  estab- 
lishment of  the  Empire,  covers  and  overlaps  the  entire 
Ciceronian  age.  Of  the  six  or  seven  hundred  volumes  which 
issued  from  his  pen,  and  which  formed  an  inexhaustible 


86  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

quarry  for  his  successors,  nearly  all  are  lost.  The  most 
important  of  them  were  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  books 
of  Saturae  Menippeae,  miscellanies  in  prose  and  verse 
m  the  manner  which  had  been  originated  by  Menippus  of 
Gadara,  the  master  of  the  celebrated  Meleager,  and  which 
had  at  once  obtained  an  enormous  popularity  throughout  the 
whole  of  the  Greek-speaking  world ;  the  forty-one  books  of 
Antiquitates  Rerum  ffumanarum  et  Divinarum,  the  standard 
work  on  the  religious  and  secular  antiquities  of  Rome  down 
to  the  time  of  Augustine ;  the  fifteen  books  of  Imagines, 
biographical  sketches,  with  portraits,  of  celebrated  Greeks 
and  Romans,  the  first  certain  instance  in  history  of  the 
publication  of  an  illustrated  book ;  the  twenty-five  books 
De  Lingua  Latina,  of  which  six  are  extant  in  an  im- 
perfect condition ;  and  the  treatise  De  Re  Rustica,  which 
we  possess  in  an  almost  complete  state.  This  last  work 
was  written  at  the  age  of  eighty.  It  is  in  the  form  of  a 
dialogue,  and  is  not  without  descriptive  and  dramatic  power. 
The  tediousness  which  characterised  all  Varro's  writing  is 
less  felt  where  the  subject  is  one  of  which  he  had  a  thorough 
practical  knowledge,  and  which  gave  ample  scope  for  the 
vein  of  rough  but  not  ungenial  humour  which  he  inherited 
from  Cato. 

Other  names  of  this  epoch  have  left  no  permanent  mark 
on  literature.  The  precursors  of  Sallust  in  history  seem, 
like  the  precursors  of  Cicero  in  philosophy,  to  have 
approached  their  task  with  little  more  equipment  than  that 
of  the  ordinary  amateur.  The  great  orator  Hortensius 
wrote  Annals  (probably  in  the  form  of  memoirs  of  his  own 
time),  which  are  only  known  from  a  reference  to  them  in 
a  later  history  written  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius.  Atticus, 
who  had  an  interest  in  literature  beyond  that  of  the  mere 
publisher,  drew  up  a  sort  of  handbook  of  Roman  history, 
which  is  repeatedly  mentioned  by  Cicero.  Cicero's  own 
brother  Quintus,  who  passed  for  a  man  of  letters,  com- 
posed a  work  of  the  same  kind ;  the  tragedies  with  which 


VII.]  Publilius  Syrus.  8? 

he  relieved  the  tedium  of  winter-quarters  in  Gaul  were, 
however,  translations  from  the  Greek,  not  originals.  Cicero's 
private  secretary,  Marcus  Tullius  Tiro,  best  known  by  the 
system  of  shorthand  which  he  invented  or  improved,  and 
which  for  long  remained  the  basis  of  a  standard  code,  is 
also  mentioned  as  the  author  of  works  on  grammar,  and, 
as  has  already  been  noticed,  edited  a  collection  of  his 
master's  letters  after  his  death.  Decimus  Laberius,  a 
Roman  of  equestrian  family,  and  Publilius  Syrus,  a  natural- 
ised native  of  Antioch,  wrote  mimes,  which  were  performed 
with  great  applause,  and  gave  a  fugitive  literary  importance 
to  this  trivial  form  of  dramatic  entertainment.  A  collec- 
tion of  sentences  which  passes  under  the  name  of  the 
latter  was  formed  out  of  his  works  under  the  Empire,  and 
enlarged  from  other  sources  in  the  Middle  Ages.  It 
supplies  many  admirable  instances  of  the  terse  vigour  of 
the  Roman  popular  philosophy;  some  of  these  lines,  like 
the  famous  — 

Bene  vixit  is  qui  potuit  cum  voluit  mori, 
or  — 

Index  damnatur  ubi  nocens  absolvitur, 
or  — 

O  vifam  misero  longam,felici  brevem! 

or  the  perpetually  misquoted  — 

Stultumfadtfortuna,  quern  vult  pcrdere, 

have  sunk  deeper  and  been  more  widely  known  than  almost 
anything  else  written  in  Latin.  Among  the  few  poets  who 
succeeded  the  circle  of  Catullus,  the  only  one  of  interest  is 
Publius  Terentius  Varro,  known  as  Varro  Atacinus  from 
his  birthplace  on  the  banks  of  the  Aude  in  Provence,  the 
first  of  the  long  list  of  Transalpine  writers  who  filled  Rome 
at  a  later  period.  Besides  the  usual  translations  and 
adaptations  from  Alexandrian  originals,  and  an  elaborate 


88  Latin  Literature.  [I. 

cosmography,  he  practised  his  considerable  talent  in  hexa- 
meter verse  both  in  epic  and  satiric  poetry,  and  did  some- 
thing to  clear  the  way  in  metrical  technique  for  both  Horace 
and  Virgil.  With  these  names,  among  a  crowd  of  others 
even  more  vague  and  shadowy,  the  literature  of  the  Roman 
Republic  closes.  A  new  generation  was  already  at  the 
doors. 


II. 

THE   AUGUSTAN   AGE, 


VIRGIL. 

PUBLIUS  VERGILIUS  MARO  was  born  at  the  village  of  Andes, 
near  Mantua,  on  the  i5th  of  October,  70  B.C.  The 
province  of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  though  not  formally  incorpo- 
rated with  Italy  till  twenty  years  later,  had  before  this 
become  thoroughly  Romanised,  and  was  one  of  the  princi- 
pal recruiting  grounds  for  the  legions.  But  the  population 
was  still,  by  blood  and  sympathy,  very  largely  Celtic ;  and 
modern  theorists  are  fond  of  tracing  the  new  element  of 
romance,  which  Virgil  introduced  with  such  momentous 
results  into  Latin  poetry,  to  the  same  Celtic  spirit  which 
in  later  ages  flowered  out  in  the  Arthurian  legend,  and 
inspired  the  whole  creative  literature  of  mediaeval  Europe. 
fo  the  countrymen  of  Shakespeare  and  Keats  it  will  not 
seem  necessary  to  assume  a  Celtic  origin,  on  abstract 
grounds,  for  any  new  birth  of  this  romantic  element.  The 
name  Maro  may  or  may  not  be  Celtic ;  any  argument 
founded  on  it  is  of  little  more  relevance  than  the  fancy 
which  once  interpreted  the  name  of  Virgil's  mother,  Magia 
Polla,  into  a  supernatural  significance,  and,  connecting  the 
name  Virgilius  itself  with  the  word  Virgo,  metamorphosed 
the  poet  into  an  enchanter  born  of  a  maiden  mother,  the 
Merlin  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

Virgil's  father  was  a  small  freeholder  in  Andes,  who 
farmed  his  own  land,  practised  forestry  and  bee-keeping, 


92  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

and  gradually  accumulated  a  sufficient  competence  to 
enable  him  to  give  his  son  — an  only  child,  so  far  as  can  be 
ascertained  —  the  best  education  that  the  times  could  pro- 
vide. He  was  sent  to  school  at  the  neighbouring  town  of 
Cremona,  and  afterwards  to  Milan,  the  capital  city  of  the 
province.  At  the  age  of  seventeen  he  proceeded  to  Rome, 
where  he  studied  oratory  and  philosophy  under  the  best 
masters  of  the  time.  A  tradition,  which  the  dates  make 
improbable,  was  that  Gaius  Octavius,  afterwards  the  Em- 
peror Augustus,  was  for  a  time  his  fellow-scholar  under 
the  rhetorician  Epidius.  In  the  class-room  of  the  Epicu- 
rean Siro  he  may  have  made  his  first  acquaintance  with  the 
poetry  of  Lucretius. 

For  the  next  ten  years  we  know  nothing  of  Virgil's  life, 
which  no  doubt  was  that  of  a  profound  student.  His 
father  had  died,  and  his  mother  married  again,  and  his 
patrimony  was  sufficient  to  support  him  until  a  turn  of 
the  wheel  of  public  affairs  for  a  moment  lost,  and  then 
permanently  secured  his  fortune.  After  the  battle  of 
Philippi,  the  first  task  of  the  victorious  triumvirs  was  to 
provide  for  the  disbanding  and  settlement  of  the  immense 
armies  which  had  been  raised  for  the  Civil  war.  The 
lands  of  cities  which  had  taken  the  Republican  side  were 
confiscated  right  and  left  for  this  purpose ;  among  the 
rest,  Virgil's  farm,  which  was  included  in  the  territory 
of  Cremona.  But  Virgil  found  in  the  administrator  of  the 
district,  Gaius  Asinius  Pollio,  himself  a  distinguished  critic 
and  man  of  letters,  a  powerful  and  active  patron.  By  his 
influence  and  that  of  his  friends,  Cornelius  Gallus  and 
Alfenus  Varus  —  the  former  a  soldier  and  poet,  the  latter  an 
eminent  jurist,  who  both  had  been  fellow-students  of  Virgil 
at  Rome  —  Virgil  was  compensated  by  an  estate  in  Campania, 
and  introduced  to  the  intimate  circle  of  Octavianus,  who, 
under  the  terms  of  the  triumvirate,  was  already  absolute 
ruler  of  Italy. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  the  Eclogues  were  published, 


I.]  Virgil.  93 

whether  separately  or  collectively  is  uncertain,  though  the 
final  collection  and  arrangement,  which  is  Virgil's  own, 
can  hardly  be  later  than  38  B.C.  The  impression  they 
made  on  the  world  of  letters  was  immediate  and  universal. 
To  some  degree  no  doubt  a  reception  was  secured  to  them 
by  the  influence  of  Maecenas,  the  Home  Minister  of 
Octavianus,  who  had  already  taken  up  the  line  which  he  so 
largely  developed  in  later  years,  of  a  public  patron  of  art 
and  letters  in  the  interest  of  the  new  government.  But  had 
Virgil  made  his  first  public  appearance  merely  as  a  Court 
poet,  it  is  probable  that  the  Eclogues  would  have  roused 
little  enthusiasm  and  little  serious  criticism.  Their  true 
significance  seems  to  have  been  at  once  realised  as  marking 
the  beginning  of  a  new  era ;  and  amid  the  storm  of  criticism, 
laudatory  and  adverse,  which  has  raged  round  them  for  so 
many  ages  since,  this  cardinal  fact  has  always  remained 
prominent.  Alike  to  the  humanists  or  the  earlier  Renais- 
sance, who  found  in  them  the  sunrise  of  a  golden  age  of 
poetry  and  the  achievement  of  the  Latin  conquest  over 
Greece,  and  to  the  more  recent  critics  of  this  century,  for 
whom  they  represented  the  echo  of  an  already  exhausted 
convention  and  the  beginning  of  the  decadence  of  Roman 
poetry,  the  Eclogues  have  been  the  real  turning-point,  not 
only  between  two  periods  of  Latin  literature,  but  between 
two  worlds. 

The  poems  destined  to  so  remarkable  a  significance  are, 
in  their  external  form,  close  and  careful  imitations  of 
Theocritus,  and  have  all  the  vices  and  weaknesses  of  imitative 
poetry  to  a  degree  that  could  not  well  be  exceeded.  Nor 
are  these  failings  redeemed  (as  is  to  a  certain  extent  true  of 
the  purely  imitative  work  of  Catullus  and  other  poets)  by 
any  brilliant  jewel-finish  of  workmanship.  The  execution 
is  uncertain,  hesitating,  sometimes  extraordinarily  feeble. 
One  well-known  line  it  is  impossible  to  explain  otherwise 
than  as  a  mistranslation  of  a  phrase  in  Theocritus  such  as 
one  would  hardly  expect  from  an  average  schoolboy.  When 


94  Latin  Literature.  [II 

Virgil  follows  the  convention  of  the  Greek  pastoral  his  copy 
is  doubly  removed  from  nature ;  where  he  ventures  on  fresh 
impersonation  or  allegory  of  his  own,  it  is  generally  weak  in 
itself  and  always  hopelessly  out  of  tone  with  the  rest. 
Even  the  versification  is  curiously  unequal  and  imperfect. 
There  are  lines  in  more  than  one  Eclogue  which  remind 
one  in  everything  but  their  languor  of  the  flattest  parts  of 
Lucretius.  Contemporary  critics  even  went  so  far  as  to 
say  that  the  language  here  and  there  was  simply  not 
Latin. 

Yet  granted  that  all  this  and  more  than  all  this  is  true, 
it  does  not  touch  that  specific  Virgilian  charm  of  which 
these  poems  first  disclosed  the  secret.  Already  through 
their  immature  and  tremulous  cadences  there  pierces,  from 
time  to  time,  that  note  of  brooding  pity  which  is  unique 
in  the  poetry  of  the  world.  The  fourth  and  tenth  Eclogues 
may  be  singled  out  especially  as  showing  the  new  method, 
which  almost  amounted  to  a  new  human  language,  as  they 
are  also  those  where  Virgil  breaks  away  most  decidedly 
from  imitation  of  the  Greek  idyllists.  The  fourth  Eclogue 
unfortunately  has  been  so  long  and  so  deeply  associated 
with  purely  adventitious  ideas  that  it  requires  a  consider- 
able effort  to  read  it  as  it  ought  to  be  read.  The  curious 
misconception  which  turned  it  into  a  prophecy  of  the 
birth  of  Christ  outlasted  in  its  effects  any  serious  belief  in 
its  historical  truth :  even  modern  critics  cite  Isaiah  for 
parallels,  and  are  apt  to  decry  it  as  a  childish  attempt 
to  draw  a  picture  of  some  actual  golden  age.  But  the 
Sibylline  verses  which  suggested  its  contents  and  imagery 
were  really  but  the  accidental  grain  of  dust  round  which 
the  crystallisation  of  the  poem  began ;  and  the  enchanted 
light  which  lingers  over  it  is  hardly  distinguishable  from 
that  which  saturates  the  Georgics.  Cedet  et  ipse  mart  vector, 
nee  nautica  pinus  mutabit  merces — the  feeling  here  is  the 
same  as  in  his  mere  descriptions  of  daily  weather,  like 
the  Omnia  plenis  rura  natant fossis  atqne  omnis  navita ponto 


I.]  Virgil.  95 

umida  vela  legit;  not  so  much  a  vision  of  a  golden  age  as 
Nature  herself  seen  through  a  medium  of  strange  gold. 
Or  again,  in  the  tenth  Eclogue,  where  the  masque  of  shep- 
herds and  gods  passes  before  the  sick  lover,  it  is  through 
the  same  strange  and  golden  air  that  they  seem  to  move, 
and  the  heavy  lilies  of  Silvanus  droop  in  the  stillness  of  the 
same  unearthly  day. 

Seven  years  following  on  the  publication  of  the  Eclogues 
were  spent  by  Virgil  on  the  composition  of  the  Georgics. 
They  were  published  two  years  after  the  battle  of  Actium, 
being  thus  the  first,  as  they  are  the  most  splendid,  literary 
production  of  the  Empire.  They  represent  the  art  of  Virgil 
in  its  matured  perfection.  The  subject  was  one  in  which  he 
was  thoroughly  at  home  and  completely  happy.  His  own 
early  years  had  been  spent  in  the  pastures  of  the  Mincio, 
among  his  father's  cornfields  and  coppices  and  hives ;  and 
his  newer  residence,  by  the  seashore  near  Naples  in  winter, 
and  in  summer  at  his  villa  in  the  lovely  hill-country  of 
Campania,  surrounded  him  with  all  that  was  most  beautiful 
in  the  most  beautiful  of  lands.  His  delicate  health  made 
it  easier  for  him  to  give  his  work  the  slow  and  arduous 
elaboration  that  makes  the  Georgics  in  mere  technical 
finish  the  most  perfect  work  of  Latin,  or  perhaps  of  any 
literature.  There  is  no  trace  of  impatience  in  the  work. 
It  was  in  some  sense  a  commission;  but  Augustus  and 
Maecenas,  if  it  be  true  that  they  suggested  the  subject,  had, 
at  all  events,  the  sense  not  to  hurry  it.  The  result  more 
than  fulfilled  the  brilliant  promise  of  the  Eclogues.  Virgil 
was  now,  without  doubt  or  dispute,  the  first  of  contempo- 
rary poets. 

But  his  responsibilities  grew  with  his  greatness.  The 
scheme  of  a  great  Roman  epic,  which  had  always  floated 
before  his  own  mind,  was  now  definitely  and  indeed 
urgently  pressed  upon  him  by  authority  which  it  was 
difficult  to  resist.  And  many  elements  in  his  own  mind 
drew  him  in  the  same  direction.  Too  much  stress  need 


96  Latin  Literature.  pi. 

not  be  laid  on  the  passage  in  the  sixth  Eclogue  —  one  of 
the  rare  autobiographic  touches  is  his  work  —  in  which  he 
alludes  to  his  early  experiments  in  "  singing  of  kings  and 
battles."  Such  early  exercises  are  the  common  field  of 
young  poets.  But  the  maturing  of  his  mind,  which  can 
be  traced  in  the  Georgics,  was  urging  him  towards  certain 
methods  of  art  for  which  the  epic  was  the  only  literary 
form  that  gave  sufficient  scope.  More  and  more  he  was 
turning  from  nature  to  man  and  human  life,  and  to  thd 
contemplation  of  human  destiny.  The  growth  of  the 
psychological  instinct  in  the  Georgics  is  curiously  visible 
in  the  episode  of  Aristaeus,  with  which  the  poem  now 
ends.  According  to  a  well-authenticated  tradition,  the 
last  two  hundred  and  fifty  lines  of  the  fourth  Georgic  were 
written  several  years  after  the  rest  of  the  poem,  to  replace 
the  original  conclusion,  which  had  contained  the  praises 
of  his  early  friend,  Cornelius  Callus,  now  dead  in  disgrace 
and  proscribed  from  court  poetry.  In  the  story  of  Orpheus 
and  Eurydice,  in  the  later  version,  Virgil  shows  a  new 
method  and  a  new  power.  It  stands  between  the  idyl  and 
the  epic,  but  it  is  the  epic  method  towards  which  it  tends. 
No  return  upon  the  earlier  manner  was  thenceforth  pos- 
sible ;  with  many  searchings  of  heart,  with  much  occasional 
despondency  and  dissatisfaction,  he  addressed  himself  to 
the  composition  of  the  Aeneid. 

The  earlier  national  epics  of  Naevius  and  Ennius  had 
framed  certain  lines  for  Roman  epic  poetry,  which  it  was 
almost  bound  to  follow.  They  had  established  the  mythical 
connection  of  Rome  with  Troy  and  with  the  great  cycle 
of  Greek  legend,  and  had  originated  the  idea  of  making 
Rome  itself — that  Fortuna  Urbis  which  later  stood  in  the 
form  of  a  golden  statue  in  the  imperial  bedchamber  —  the 
central  interest,  one  might  almost  say  the  central  figure, 
of  the  story.  To  adapt  the  Homeric  methods  to  this  new 
purpose,  and  at  the  same  time  to  make  his  epic  the  vehicle 
for  all  his  own  inward  breedings  over  life  and  fate,  for 


*  ]  Virgil.  97 

his  subtle  and  delicate  psychology,  and  for  that  philosophic 
passion  in  which  all  the  other  motives  and  springs  of  life 
were  becoming  included,  was  a  task  incapable  of  perfect 
solution.  On  his  death-bed  Virgil  made  it  his  last  desire 
that  the  Aeneid  should  be  destroyed,  nominally  on  the 
ground  that  it  still  wanted  three  years'  work  to  bring  it 
to  perfection,  but  one  can  hardly  doubt  from  a  deeper 
and  less  articulate  feeling.  The  command  of  the  Emperor 
alone  prevented  his  wish  from  taking  effect.  With  the 
unfinished  Aeneid,  as  with  the  unfinished  poem  of  Lucretius, 
it  is  easy  to  see  within  what  limits  any  changes  or  im- 
provements would  have  been  made  in  it  had  the  author 
lived  longer :  the  work  is,  in  both  cases,  substantially 
done. 

The  Aeneid  was  begun  the  year  after  the  publication 
of  the  Georgics,  when  Virgil  was  forty  years  of  age.  During 
its  progress  he  continued  to  live  for  the  most  part  in  his 
Campanian  retirement.  He  had  a  house  at  Rome  in  the 
fashionable  quarter  of  the  Esquiline,  but  used  it  little. 
He  was  also  much  in  Sicily,  and  the  later  books  of  the 
Aeneid  seem  to  show  personal  observation  of  many  parts 
of  Central  Italy.  It  is  a  debated  question  whether  he 
visited  Greece  more  than  once.  His  last  visit  there  was 
in  19  B.C.  He  had  resolved  to  spend  three  years  more 
on  the  completion  of  his  poem,  and  then  give  himself  up 
to  philosophy  for  what  might  remain  of  his  life.  But  the 
three  years  were  not  given  him.  A  fever,  caught  while 
visiting  Megara  on  a  day  of  excessive  heat,  induced  him 
to  return  hastily  to  Italy.  He  died  a  few  days  after  landing 
at  Brundusium,  on  the  26th  of  September.  His  ashes 
were,  by  his  own  request,  buried  near  Naples,  where  his 
tomb  was  a  century  afterwards  worshipped  as  a  holy  place. 

The  Aeneid,  carefully  edited  from  the  poet's  manuscript 

by  two  of  his  friends,  was   forthwith  published,  and   had 

such  a  reception  as  perhaps  no  poem  before  or  since  has 

ever  found.     Already,  while  it  was  in  progress,  it  had  been 

H 


98  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

rumoured  as  "  something  greater  than  the  Iliad"  and  now 
that  it  appeared,  it  at  once  became  the  canon  of  Roman 
poetry,  and  immediately  began  to  exercise  an  unparalleled 
influence  over  Latin  literature,  prose  as  well  as  verse. 
Critics  were  not  indeed  wanting  to  point  out  its  defects, 
and  there  was  still  a  school  (which  attained  greater  im- 
portance a  century  later)  that  went  back  to  Lucretius 
and  the  older  poets,  and  refused  to  allow  Virgil's  pre- 
eminence. But  for  the  Roman  world  at  large,  as  since 
for  the  world  of  the  Latin  races,  Virgil  became  what  Homer 
had  been  to  Greece,  "  the  poet."  The  decay  of  art  and 
letters  in  the  third  century  only  added  a  mystical  and 
hieratic  element  to  his  fame.  Even  to  the  Christian  Church 
he  remained  a  poet  sacred  and  apart :  in  his  profound 
tenderness  and  his  mystical  "  yearning  after  the  further 
shore  "  as  much  as  in  the  supposed  prophecy  of  the  fourth 
Eclogue,  they  found  and  reverenced  what  seemed  to  them 
like  an  unconscious  inspiration.  The  famous  passage  of 
St.  Augustine,  where  he  speaks  of  his  own  early  love  for 
Virgil,  shows  in  its  half-hysterical  renunciation  how  great 
the  charm  of  the  Virgilian  art  had  been,  and  still  was, 
to  him  :  Quid  miserius  misero,  he  cries,  non  miserante  se 
ipsum,  et  flente  Didonis  mortem  quae  fiebat  amando  Aeneam, 
non  flente  autem  mortem  meam  quae  fiebat  non  amando  te? 
Deus  lumen  cordis  met,  non  te  amabam,  et  haec  non  flebam, 
sed  flebam  Didonem  exstinctam,ferroque  extrema  secutam, 
sequens  ipse  extrema  condita  tua  relicto  te!  *  To  the  graver 
and  more  matured  mind  of  Dante,  Virgil  was  the  lord  and 
master  who,  even  though  shut  out  from  Paradise,  was 
the  chosen  and  honoured  minister  of  God.  Up  to  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century  the  supremacy  of  Virgil 
was  hardly  doubted.  Since  then  the  development  of 
scientific  criticism  has  passed  him  through  all  its  searching 
processes,  and  in  a  fair  judgment  his  greatness  has  rather 
gained  than  lost.  The  doubtful  honour  of  indiscriminate 

*  Confess.,  I.  xii. 


I.]  Virgil.  99 

praise  was  for  a  brief  period  succeeded  by  the  attacks 
of  an  almost  equally  undiscriminating  censure.  An  ill- 
judged  partiality  had  once  spoken  of  the  Aeneid  as  some- 
thing greater  than  a  Roman  Iliad :  it  was  easy  to  show 
that  in  the  most  remarkable  Homeric  qualities  the  Aeneid 
fell  far  short,  and  that,  so  far  as  it  was  an  imitation  of 
Homer,  it  could  no  more  stand  beside  Homer  than  the 
imitations  of  Theocritus  in  the  Eclogues  could  stand  beside 
Theocritus.  The  romantic  movement,  with  its  impatience 
of  established  fames,  damned  the  Aeneid  in  one  word 
as  artificial ;  forgetting,  or  not  seeing,  that  the  Aeneid  was 
itself  the  fountain-head  of  romanticism.  Long  after  the 
theory  of  the  noble  savage  had  passed  out  of  political 
and  social  philosophy  it  lingered  in  literary  criticism ;  and 
the  distinction  between  "  natural  "  and  "  artificial "  poetry 
was  held  to  be  like  that  between  light  and  darkness.  It 
was  not  till  a  comparatively  recent  time  that  the  leisurely 
progress  of  criticism  stumbled  on  the  fact  that  all  poetry 
is  artificial,  and  that  the  Iliad  itself  is  artificial  in  a  very 
eminent  and  unusual  degree. 

No  great  work  of  art  can  be  usefully  judged  by 
comparison  with  any  other  great  work  of  art.  It  may, 
indeed,  be  interesting  and  fertile  to  compare  one  with 
another,  in  order  to  seize  more  sharply  and  appreciate 
more  vividly  the  special  beauty  of  each.  But  to  press 
comparison  further,  and  to  depreciate  one  because  it  has 
not  what  is  the  special  quality  of  the  other,  is  to  lose  sight 
of  the  function  of  criticism.  We  shall  not  find  in  Virgil 
the  bright  speed,  the  unexhausted  joyfulness,  which,  in 
spite  of  a  view  of  life  as  grave  as  Virgil's  own,  make  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  unique  in  poetry ;  nor,  which  is  more 
to  the  point  as  regards  the  Aeneid,  the  narrative  power, 
the  genius  for  story-telling,  which  is  one  of  the  rarest  of 
literary  gifts,  and  which  Ovid  alone  among  the  Latin  poets 
possessed  in  any  high  perfection.  We  shall  not  find  in 
him  that  high  and  concentrated  passion  which  in  Pindar 


IOO  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

(as  afterwards  in  Dante)  fuses  the  elements  of  thought  and 
language  into  a  single  white  heat.  We  shall  not  find  in 
him  the  luminous  and  untroubled  calm,  as  of  a  spirit  in 
which  all  passion  has  been  fused  away,  which  makes  the 
poetry  of  Sophocles  so  crystalline  and  irreproachable.  Nor 
shall  we  find  in  him  the  great  qualities  of  his  own  Latin 
predecessors,  Lucretius  or  Catullus.  All  this  is  merely 
saying  in  amplified  words  that  Virgil  was  not  Lucretius 
or  Catullus,  and  that  still  less  was  he  Homer,  or  Pindar, 
or  Sophocles ;  and  to  this  may  be  added,  that  he  lived  in 
the  world  which  the  great  Greek  and  Latin  poets  had 
created,  though  he  looked  forward  out  of  it  into  another. 
Yet  the  positive  excellences  of  the  Aeneid  are  so 
numerous  and  so  splendid  that  the  claim  of  its  author  to 
be  the  Roman  Homer  is  not  unreasonable,  if  it  be  made 
clear  that  the  two  poems  are  fundamentally  disparate,  and 
that  no  more  is  meant  than  that  the  one  poet  is  as  eminent 
in  his  own  form  and  method  as  the  other  in  his.  In  our 
haste  to  rest  Virgil's  claim  to  supremacy  as  a  poet  on  the 
single  quality  in  which  he  is  unique  and  unapproachable 
we  may  seem  tacitly  to  assent  to  the  judgment  of  his 
detractors  on  other  points.  Yet  the  more  one  studies  the 
Aeneid,  the  more  profoundly  is  one  impressed  by  its  quality 
as  a  masterpiece  of  construction.  The  most  adverse  critic 
would  not  deny  that  portions  of  the  poem  are,  both  in 
dramatic  and  narrative  quality,  all  but  unsurpassed,  and  in 
a  certain  union  of  imaginative  sympathy  with  their  fine 
dramatic  power  and  their  stateliness  of  narration  perhaps 
unequalled.  The  story  of  the  last  agony  of  Troy  could  not 
be  told  with  more  breadth,  more  richness,  more  brilliance 
than  it  is  told  in  the  second  book  :  here,  at  least,  the  story 
neither  flags  nor  hurries ;  from  the  moment  when  the 
Greek  squadron  sets  sail  from  Tenedos  and  the  signal- 
flame  flashes  from  their  flagship,  the  scenes  of  the  fatal 
night  pass  before  us  in  a  smooth  swift  stream  that  gathers 
weight  and  volume  as  it  goes,  till  it  culminates  in  the 


I.]  Virgil.  IOI 

vision  of  awful  faces  which  rises  before  Aeneas  when  Venus 
lifts  the  cloud  of  mortality  from  his  startled  eyes.  The 
episode  of  Nisus  and  Euryalus  in  the  ninth  book,  and  that 
of  Camilla  in  the  eleventh,  are  in  their  degree  as  admirably 
vivid  and  stately.  The  portraiture  of  Dido,  again,  in  the 
fourth  book,  is  in  combined  breadth  and  subtlety  one  of 
the  dramatic  masterpieces  of  human  literature.  It  is  idle 
to  urge  that  this  touch  is  borrowed  from  Euripides  or  that 
suggested  by  Sophocles,  or  to  quote  the  Medea  of  Apol- 
lonius  as  the  original  of  which  Dido  is  an  elaborate  imita- 
tion. What  Virgil  borrowed  he  knew  how  to  make  his 
own ;  and  the  world  which,  while  not  denying  the  tender- 
ness, the  grace,  the  charm  of  the  heroine  of  the  Argo- 
nautica,  leaves  the  Argonautica  unread,  has  thrilled  and 
grown  pale  from  generation  to  generation  over  the  passionate 
tragedy  of  the  Carthaginian  queen. 

But  before  a  deeper  and  more  appreciative  study  of  the 
Aeneid  these  great  episodes  cease  to  present  themselves  as 
detached  eminences.  That  the  Aeneid  is  unequal  is  true ; 
that  passages  in  it  here  and  there  are  mannered,  and  even 
flat,  is  true  also ;  but  to  one  who  has  had  the  patience  to 
know  it  thoroughly,  it  is  in  its  total  effect,  and  not  in  the 
great  passages,  or  even  the  great  books,  that  it  seems  the 
most  consummate  achievement.  Virgil  may  seem  to  us  to 
miss  some  of  his  opportunities,  to  labour  others  beyond 
their  due  proportion,  to  force  himself  (especially  in  the 
later  books)  into  material  not  well  adapted  to  the  distinctive 
Virgilian  treatment.  The  slight  and  vague  portrait  of  the 
maiden  princess  of  Latium,  in  which  the  one  vivid  touch 
of  her  "  flower-like  hair  "  is  the  only  clear  memory  we  carry 
away  with  us,  might,  in  different  hands  —  in  those  of  Apollo- 
nius,  for  instance,  —  have  given  a  new  grace  and  charm  to 
the  scenes  where  she  appears.  The  funeral  games  at  the 
tomb  of  Anchises,  no  longer  described,  as  they  had  been 
in  early  Greek  poetry,  from  the  mere  pleasure  in  dwelling 
upon  their  details,  begin  to  become  tedious  before  they 


IO2  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

are  over.  In  the  battle-pieces  of  the  last  three  books  we 
sometimes  cannot  help  being  reminded  that  Virgil  is  rather 
wearily  following  an  obsolescent  literary  tradition.  But 
when  we  have  set  such  passages  against  others  which,  without 
being  as  widely  celebrated  as  the  episode  of  the  sack  of 
Troy  or  the  death  of  Dido,  are  equally  miraculous  in  their 
workmanship  —  the  end  of  the  fifth  book,  for  instance,  or 
the  muster-roll  of  the  armies  of  Italy  in  the  seventh,  or, 
above  all,  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  lines  of  the  twelfth, 
where  Virgil  rises  perhaps  to  his  very  greatest  manner  — 
we  shall  not  find  that  the  splendour  of  the  poem  depends 
on  detached  passages,  but  far  more  on  the  great  manner 
and  movement  which,  interfused  with  the  unique  Vir- 
gilian  tenderness,  sustains  the  whole  structure  through  and 
through. 

The  merely  technical  quality  of  Virgil's  art  has  never 
been  disputed.  The  Latin  hexameter,  "  the  stateliest 
measure  ever  moulded  by  the  lips  of  man,"  was  brought 
by  him  to  a  perfection  which  made  any  further  develop- 
ment impossible.  Up  to  the  last  it  kept  taking  in  his 
hands  new  refinements  of  rhythm  and  movement  which 
make  the  later  books  of  the  Aeneid  (the  least  successful 
part  of  the  poem  in  general  estimation)  an  even  more 
fascinating  study  to  the  lovers  of  language  than  the  more 
formally  perfect  work  of  the  Georgics,  or  the  earlier  books 
of  the  Aeneid  itself.  A  brilliant  modern  critic  has  noted 
this  in  words  which  deserve  careful  study.  "The  innova- 
tions are  individually  hardly  preceptible,  but  taken  together 
they  alter  the  character  of  the  hexameter  line  in  a  way 
more  easily  felt  than  described.  Among  the  more  definite 
changes  we  may  note  that  there  are  more  full  stops  in  the 
middle  of  lines,  there  are  more  elisions,  there  is  a  larger 
proportion  of  short  words,  there  are  more  words  repeated, 
more  assonances,  and  a  freer  use  of  the  emphasis  gained  by 
the  recurrence  of  verbs  in  the  same  or  cognate  tenses. 
Where  passages  thus  characterised  have  come  down  to  us 


VI  Virgil.  103 

still  in  the  making,  the  effect  is  forced  and  fragmentary; 
where  they  succeed,  they  combine  in  a  novel  manner  the 
rushing  freedom  of  the  old  trochaics  with  the  majesty 
which  is  the  distinguishing  feature  of  Virgil's  style.  Art 
has  concealed  its  art,  and  the  poet's  last  words  suggest  to 
us  possibilities  in  the  Latin  tongue  which  no  successor  has 
been  able  to  realise."  Again,  the  psychological  interest 
and  insight  which  keep  perpetually  growing  throughout 
Virgil's  work  result  in  an  almost  unequalled  power  of  ex- 
pressing in  exquisite  language  the  half-tones  and  delicate 
shades  of  mental  processes.  The  famous  simile  in  the 
twelfth  Aeneid — 

Ac  velut  in  somnis  oculos  ubi  languida  pressit 
Node  quies,  nequiquam  avidos  extendere  cursus 
Velle  videmur,  et  in  mediis  conatibus  aegri 
Succidimus,  nee  lingua  valet,  nee  corpore  notae 
Sufficiunt  vires  aut  vox  et  verba  sequuntur  — 

is  an  instance  of  the  amazing  mastery  with  which  he  makes 
language  have  the  effect  of  music,  in  expressing  the  subtlest 
processes  of  feeling. 

But  the  specific  and  central  charm  of  Virgil  lies  deeper 
than  in  any  merely  technical  quality.  The  word  which 
expresses  it  most  nearly  is  that  of  pity.  In  the  most  famous 
of  his  single  lines  he  speaks  of  the  "  tears  of  things ;  "  just 
this  sense  of  tears,  this  voice  that  always,  in  its  most  sustained 
splendour  and  in  its  most  ordinary  cadences,  vibrates  with 
a  strange  pathos,  is  what  finally  places  him  alone  among 
artists.  This  thrill  in  the  voice,  come  colui  che  piange  e  dice, 
is  never  absent  from  his  poetry.  In  the  "lonely  words," 
in  the  "  pathetic  half-lines "  spoken  of  by  the  two  great 
modern  masters  of  English  prose  and  verse,  he  perpetually 
touches  the  deepest  springs  of  feeling ;  in  these  it  is  that 
he  sounds,  as  no  other  poet  has  done,  the  depths  of  beauty 
and  sorrow,  of  patience  and  magnanimity,  of  honour  in 
life  and  hope  beyond  death. 


IO4  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

A  certain  number  of  minor  poems  have  come  down  to 
us  associated  more  or  less  doubtfully  with  Virgil's  name. 
Three  of  these  are  pieces  in  hexameter  verse,  belonging 
broadly  to  the  class  of  the  epyllion,  or  "little  epic,"  which 
was  invented  as  a  convenient  term  to  include  short  poems 
in  the  epic  metre  that  were  not  definitely  pastorals  either 
in  subject  or  treatment,  and  which  the  Alexandrian  poets, 
headed  by  Theocritus,  had  cultivated  with  much  assiduity 
and  considerable  success.  The  most  important  of  them, 
the  Culex,  or  Gnat,  is  a  poem  of  about  four  hundred  lines, 
in  which  the  incident  of  a  gnat  saving  the  life  of  a  sleeping 
shepherd  from  a  serpent  and  being  crushed  to  death  in  the 
act  is  made  the  occasion  of  an  elaborate  description  of  the 
infernal  regions,  from  which  the  ghost  of  the  insect  rises 
to  reproach  his  unconscious  murderer.  That  Virgil  in  his 
youth  wrote  a  poem  with  this  title  is  established  by  the 
words  of  Martial  and  Statius ;  nor  is  there  any  certain 
argument  against  the  Virgilian  authorship  of  the  extant 
poem,  but  various  delicate  metrical  considerations  incline 
recent  critics  to  the  belief  that  it  is  from  the  hand  of  an 
almost  contemporary  imitator  who  had  caught  the  Virgilian 
manner  with  great  accuracy.  The  Ctris,  another  piece  of 
somewhat  greater  length,  on  the  story  of  Scylla  and  Nisus, 
is  more  certainly  the  production  of  some  forgotten  poet 
belonging  to  the  circle  of  Marcus  Valerius  Messalla,  and  is 
of  interest  as  showing  the  immense  pains  taken  in  the 
later  Augustan  age  to  continue  the  Virgilian  tradition.  The 
third  poem,  the  Moretum,  is  at  once  briefer  and  slighter  in 
structure  and  more  masterly  in  form.  It  is  said  to  be  a 
close  copy  of  a  Greek  original  by  Parthenius  of  Nicaea, 
a  distinguished  man  of  letters  of  this  period  who  taught 
Virgil  Greek ;  nor  is  there  any  grave  improbability  in 
supposing  that  the  Moretum  is  really  one  of  the  early  exer- 
cises in  verse  over  which  Virgil  must  have  spent  years  of  his 
laborious  apprenticeship,  saved  by  some  accident  from  the 
fate  to  which  his  own  rigorous  judgment  condemned  the  rest. 


I.]  Virgil.  105 

So  far  the  whole  of  the  poetry  attributed  to  Virgil  is  in 
the  single  form  of  hexameter  verse,  to  the  perfecting  of 
which  his  whole  life  was  devoted.  The  other  little  pieces 
in  elegiac  and  lyric  metres  require  but  slight  notice.  Some 
are  obviously  spurious ;  others  are  so  slight  and  juvenile 
that  it  matters  little  whether  they  are  spurious  or  not.  One 
elegiac  piece,  the  Copa,  is  of  admirable  vivacity  and  grace, 
and  the  touch  in  it  is  so  singularly  unlike  the  Virgilian 
manner  as  to  tempt  one  into  the  paradox  of  its  authenticity. 
That  Virgil  wrote  much  which  he  deliberately  destroyed  is 
obviously  certain;  his  fastidiousness  and  his  melancholy 
alike  drove  him  towards  the  search  after  perfection,  and 
his  mercilessness  towards  his  own  work  may  be  measured 
by  his  intention  to  burn  the  Aeneid.  Not  less  by  this 
passionate  desire  of  unattainable  perfection  than  by  the 
sustained  glory  of  his  actual  achievement,  —  his  haunting  and 
liquid  rhythms,  his  majestic  sadness,  his  grace  and  pity,  — 
he  embodies  for  all  ages  that  secret  which  makes  art  the 
life  of  life  itself. 


n. 

HORACE. 

IN  that  great  turning-point  of  the  world's  history  marked 
by  the  establishment  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  position 
of  Virgil  is  so  unique  because  he  looks  almost  equally 
forwards  and  backwards.  His  attitude  towards  his  own 
age  is  that  of  one  who  was  in  it  rather  than  of  it.  On 
the  one  hand  is  his  intense  feeling  for  antiquity,  based  on 
and  reinforced  by  that  immense  antiquarian  knowledge 
which  made  him  so  dear  to  commentators,  and  which 
renders  some  of  his  work  so  difficult  to  appreciate  from 
our  mere  want  of  information ;  on  the  other,  is  that  per- 
petual brooding  over  futurity  which  made  him,  within  a 
comparatively  short  time  after  his  death,  regarded  as  a 
prophet  and  his  works  as  in  some  sense  oracular.  The 
Sortes  Vergilianae,  if  we  may  believe  the  confused  gossip 
of  the  Augustan  History,  were  almost  a  State  institution, 
while  rationalism  was  still  the  State  creed  in  ordinary 
matters.  Thus,  while,  in  a  way,  he  represented  and,  as  it 
were,  gave  voice  to  the  Rome  of  Augustus,  he  did  so  in 
a  transcendental  manner;  the  Rome  which  he  represents, 
whether  as  city  or  empire,  being  less  a  fact  than  an  idea, 
and  already  strongly  tinged  with  that  mysticism  which  we 
regard  as  essentially  mediaeval,  and  which  culminated  later 
without  any  violent  breach  of  continuity  in  the  conception 
of  a  spiritual  Rome  which  was  a  kingdom  of  God  on  earth, 

406 


II.]  Horace.  107 

and  of  which  the  Empire  and  the  Papacy  were  only  two 
imperfect  and  mutually  complementary  phases  ;  qudla  Roma 
onde  Cristo  e  Romano,  as  it  was  expressed  by  Dante  with 
his  characteristic  width  and  precision. 

To  this  mystical  temper  the  whole  mind  and  art  of 
Virgil's  great  contemporary  stands  in  the  most  pointed 
contrast.  More  than  almost  any  other  poet  of  equal 
eminence,  Horace  lived  in  the  present  and  actual  world; 
it  is  only  when  he  turns  aside  from  it  that  he  loses  himself. 
Certain  external  similarities  of  method  there  are  between 
them  —  above  all,  in  that  mastery  of  verbal  technique  which 
made  the  Latin  language  something  new  in  the  hands  of 
both.  Both  were  laborious  and  indefatigable  artists,  and 
in  their  earlier  acquaintanceship,  at  all  events,  were  close 
personal  friends.  But  the  five  years'  difference  in  their  ages 
represents  a  much  more  important  interval  in  their  poetical 
development.  The  earlier  work  of  Horace,  in  the  years 
when  he  was  intimate  with  Virgil,  is  that  which  least  shows 
the  real  man  or  the  real  poet ;  it  was  not  till  Virgil,  sunk 
in  his  Aeneid,  and  living  in  a  somewhat  melancholy  retire- 
ment far  away  from  Rome,  was  within  a  few  years  of  his 
death,  that  Horace,  amid  the  gaiety  and  vivid  life  of  the 
capital,  found  his  true  scope,  and  produced  the  work  that 
has  made  him  immortal. 

Yet  the  earlier  circumstances  of  the  two  poets'  lives  had 
been  not  unlike.  Like  Virgil,  Horace  sprang  from  the 
ranks  of  the  provincial  lower  middle  class,  in  whom  the 
virtues  of  industry,  frugality,  and  sense  were  generally 
accompanied  by  little  grace  or  geniality.  But  he  was 
exceptionally  fortunate  in  his  father.  This  excellent  man, 
who  is  always  spoken  of  by  his  son  with  a  deep  respect 
and  affection,  was  a  freedman  of  Venusia  in  Southern 
Italy,  who  had  acquired  a  small  estate  by  his  economies  as 
a  collector  of  taxes  in  the  neighbourhood.  Horace  must 
have  shown  some  unusual  promise  as  a  boy ;  yet,  according 
to  his  own  account,  it  was  less  from  this  motive  than  from 


io8  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

a  disinterested  belief  in  the  value  of  education  that  his 
father  resolved  to  give  him,  at  whatever  personal  sacrifice, 
every  advantage  that  was  enjoyed  by  the  children  of  the 
highest  social  class.  The  boy  was  taken  to  Rome  about 
the  age  of  twelve  —  Virgil,  a  youth  of  seventeen,  came  there 
from  Milan  about  the  same  time  —  and  given  the  best 
education  that  the  capital  could  provide.  Nor  did  he 
stop  there  ;  at  eighteen  he  proceeded  to  Athens,  the  most 
celebrated  university  then  existing,  to  spend  several  years 
in  completing  his  studies  in  literature  and  philosophy. 
While  he  was  there  the  assassination  of  Caesar  took  place, 
and  the  Civil  war  broke  out.  Marcus  Brutus  occupied 
Macedonia,  and  swept  Greece  for  recruits.  The  scarcity  of 
Roman  officers  was  so  great  in  the  newly  levied  legions 
that  the  young  student,  a  boy  of  barely  twenty-one,  with 
no  birth  or  connection,  no  experience,  and  no  military  or 
organising  ability,  was  not  only  accepted  with  eagerness, 
but  at  once  given  a  high  commission.  He  served  in  the 
Republican  army  till  Philippi,  apparently  without  any 
flagrant  discredit ;  after  the  defeat,  like  many  of  his  com- 
panions, he  gave  up  the  idea  of  further  resistance,  and  made 
the  best  of  his  way  back  to  Italy.  He  found  his  little 
estate  forfeited,  but  he  was  not  so  important  a  person  that 
he  had  to  fear  proscription,  and  with  the  strong  common 
sense  which  he  had  already  developed,  he  bought  or  begged 
himself  a  small  post  in  the  civil  service  which  just  enabled 
him  to  live.  Three  years  later  he  was  introduced  by  Virgil 
to  Maecenas,  and  his  uninterrupted  prosperity  began. 

Did  we  know  more  of  the  history  of  Horace's  life  in  the 
interval  between  his  leaving  the  university  and  his  becoming 
one  of  the  circle  of  recognised  Augustan  poets,  much  in  his 
poetical  development  might  be  less  perplexing  to  us.  The 
effect  of  these  years  was  apparently  to  throw  him  back, 
to  arrest  or  thwart  what  would  have  been  his  natural 
growth.  No  doubt  he  was  one  of  the  men  who  (like  Caesar 
or  Cromwell  in  other  fields  of  action)  develop  late;  but 


II.]  Horace.  109 

something  more  than  this  seems  needed  to  account  for  the 
extraordinary  weakness  and  badness  of  his  first  volume  of 
lyrical  pieces,  published  by  him  when  he  was  thirty-five. 
In  the  first  book  of  the  Satires,  produced  about  five  years 
earlier,  he  had  shown  much  of  his  admirable  later  qualities, 
—  humour,  sense,  urbanity,  perception,  —  but  all  strangely 
mingled  with  a  vein  of  artistic  vulgarity  (the  worst  perhaps 
of  all  vulgarities)  which  is  totally  absent  from  his  matured 
writing.  It  is  not  merely  that  in  this  earlier  work  he  is 
often  deliberately  coarse  —  that  was  a  literary  tradition, 
from  which  it  would  require  more  than  ordinary  originality 
to  break  free,  —  but  that  he  again  and  again  allows  himself 
to  fall  into  such  absolute  flatness  as  can  only  be  excused 
on  the  theory  that  his  artistic  sense  had  been  checked  or 
crippled  in  its  growth,  and  here  and  there  disappeared  in 
his  nature  altogether.  How  elaborate  and  severe  the  self- 
education  must  have  been  which  he  undertook  and  carried 
through  may  be  guessed  from  the  vast  interval  that  sepa- 
rates the  spirit  and  workmanship  of  the  Odes  from  that  of 
the  Epodes,  and  can  partly  be  traced  step  by  step  in  the 
autobiographic  passages  of  the  second  book  of  Satires  and 
the  later  Epistles.  We  are  ignorant  in  what  circumstances 
or  under  what  pressure  the  Epodes  were  published ;  it  is 
a  plausible  conjecture  that  their  faults  were  just  such  as 
would  meet  the  approbation  of  Maecenas,  on  whose  favour 
Horace  was  at  the  time  almost  wholly  dependent ;  and 
Horace  may  himself  have  been  glad  to  get  rid,  as  it  were, 
of  his  own  bad  immature  work  by  committing  it  to  publicity. 
The  celebrated  passage  in  Keats'  preface  to  Endymion, 
where  he  gives  his  reasons  for  publishing  a  poem  of  whose 
weakness  and  faultiness  he  was  himself  acutely  conscious, 
is  of  very  wide  application ;  and  it  is  easy  to  believe  that, 
after  the  publication  of  the  Epodes,  Horace  could  turn  with 
an  easier  and  less  embarrassed  mind  to  the  composition  of 
the  Odes. 

Meanwhile  he  was   content  to  be  known  as  a  writer  of 


no  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

satire,  one  whose  wish  it  was  to  bring  up  to  an  Augustan 
polish  the  literary  form  already  carried  to  a  high  degree 
of  success  by  Lucilius.  The  second  book  of  Satires  was 
published  not  long  after  the  Epodes.  It  shows  in  every 
way  an  enormous  advance  over  the  first.  He  has  shaken 
himself  free  from  the  imitation  of  Lucilius,  which  alternates 
in  the  earliest  satires  with  a  rather  bitter  and  self-conscious 
depreciation  of  the  work  of  the  older  poet  and  his  suc- 
cessors. The  prosperous  turn  Horace's  own  life  had  taken 
was  ripening  him  fast,  and  undoing  the  bad  effects  of  earlier 
years.  We  have  passed  for  good  out  of  the  society  of 
Rupilius  Rex  and  Canidia.  At  one  time  Horace  must 
have  run  the  risk  of  turning  out  a  sort  of  ineffectual 
Francois  Villon ;  this,  too,  is  over,  and  his  earlier  education 
bears  fruit  in  a  temper  of  remarkable  and  delicate  gifts. 

This  second  book  of  Satires  marks  in  one  way  the 
culmination  of  Horace's  powers.  The  brilliance  of  the 
first  years  of  the  Empire  stimulated  the  social  aptitude  and 
dramatic  perception  of  a  poet  who  lived  in  the  heart  of 
Rome,  already  free  from  fear  or  ambition,  but  as  yet  un- 
touched by  the  melancholy  temper  which  grew  on  him  in 
later  years.  He  employs  the  semi-dramatic  form  of  easy 
dialogue  throughout  the  book  with  extraordinary  lightness 
and  skill.  The  familiar  hexameter,  which  Lucilius  had  left 
still  cumbrous  and  verbose,  is  like  wax  in  his  hands ;  his 
perfection  in  this  use  of  the  metre  is  as  complete  as  that  of 
Virgil  in  the  stately  and  serious  manner.  And  behind  this 
accomplished  literary  method  lies  an  unequalled  perception 
of  common  human  nature,  a  rich  vein  of  serious  and  quiet 
humour,  and  a  power  of  language  the  more  remarkable 
that  it  is  so  unassuming,  and  always  seems  as  it  were  to 
say  the  right  thing  by  accident.  With  the  free  growth  of 
his  natural  humour  he  has  attained  a  power  of  self-apprecia- 
tion which  is  unerring.  The  Satires  are  full  from  end  to 
end  of  himself  and  his  own  affairs ;  but  the  name  of  egoism 
cannot  be  applied  to  any  self-revelation  or  self-criticism 


!!•]  Horace.  in 

which  is  so  just  and  so  certain.  From  the  opening  lines 
of  the  first  satire,  where  he  notes  the  faults  of  his  own 
earlier  work,  to  the  last  line  of  the  book,  with  its  Parthian 
shot  at  Canidia  and  the  jeunesse  orageuse  that  he  had  so 
long  left  behind,  there  is  not  a  page  which  is  not  full  of 
that  self-reference  which,  in  its  truth  and  tact,  constantly 
passes  beyond  itself  and  holds  up  the  mirror  to  universal 
human  nature.  In  reading  the  Satires  we  all  read  our  own 
minds  and  hearts. 

Nearly  ten  years  elapsed  between  the  publication  of  the 
second  book  of  the  Satires  and  that  of  the  first  book  of 
the  Epistles.  Horace  had  passed  meanwhile  into  later 
middle  life.  He  had  in  great  measure  retired  from  society, 
and  lived  more  and  more  in  the  quietness  of  his  little  estate 
among  the  Sabine  hills.  Life  was  still  full  of  vivid  interest ; 
but  books  were  more  than  ever  a  second  world  to  him, 
and,  like  Virgil,  he  was  returning  with  a  perpetually  in- 
creasing absorption  to  the  Greek  philosophies,  which  had 
been  the  earliest  passion  of  his  youth.  Years  had  brought 
the  philosophic  mind ;  the  more  so  that  these  years  had 
been  filled  with  the  labour  of  the  Odes,  a  work  of  the 
highest  and  most  intricate  effort,  and  involving  the  constant 
study  of  the  masterpieces  of  Greek  thought  and  art.  The 
"  monument  more  imperishable  than  bronze "  had  now 
been  completed  •  its  results  are  marked  in  the  Epistles  by 
a  new  and  admirable  maturity  and  refinement.  Good 
sense,  good  feeling,  good  taste,  —  these  qualities,  latent  from 
the  first  in  Horace,  had  obtained  a  final  mastery  over  the 
coarser  strain  with  which  they  had  at  first  been  mingled ; 
and  in  their  shadow  now  appear  glimpses  of  an  inner 
nature  even  more  rare,  from  which  only  now  and  then  he 
lifts  the  veil  with  a  sort  of  delicate  self-depreciation,  in  an 
occasional  line  of  sonorous  rhythm,  or  in  some  light  touch 
by  which  he  gives  a  glimpse  into  a  more  magical  view  of 
life  and  nature  :  the  earliest  swallow  of  spring  on  the  coast, 
the  mellow  autumn  sunshine  on  a  Sabine  coppice,  the 


112  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

everlasting  sound  of  a  talking  brook ;  or,  again,  the  unfor- 
gettable phrases,  the  fallentis  semi  fa  vitae,  or  quod  pctis  hie 
fst,  or  ire  tamen  restat,  that  have,  to  so  many  minds  in  so 
many  ages,  been  key-words  to  the  whole  of  life. 

It  is  in  the  Epistles  that  Horace  reveals  himself  most 
intimately,  and  perhaps  with  the  most  subtle  charm.  But 
the  great  work  of  his  life,  for  posterity  as  well  as  for  his 
own  age,  was  the  three  books  of  Odes  which  were  published 
by  him  in  23  B.C.,  at  the  age  of  forty-two,  and  represent 
the  sustained  effort  of  about  ten  years.  This  collection 
of  eighty-eight  lyrics  was  at  once  taken  to  the  heart  of 
the  world.  Before  a  volume  of  which  every  other  line 
is  as  familiar  as  a  proverb,  which  embodies  in  a  quintes- 
sential form  that  imperishable  delight  of  literature  to  which 
the  great  words  of  Cicero  already  quoted*  give  such 
beautiful  expression,  whose  phrases  are  on  all  men's  lips 
as  those  of  hardly  any  other  ancient  author  have  been, 
criticism  is  almost  silenced.  In  the  brief  and  graceful 
epilogue,  Horace  claims  for  himself,  with  no  uncertainty  and 
with  no  arrogance,  such  eternity  as  earth  can  give.  The 
claim  was  completely  just.  The  school-book  of  the 
European  world,  the  Odes  have  been  no  less  for  nineteen 
centuries  the  companions  of  mature  years  and  the  delight 
of  age  —  adolescentiam  agunt,  senectutem  oblectant,  may  be 
said  of  them  with  as  much  truth  as  ever  now.  Yet  no 
analysis  will  explain  their  indefinable  charm.  If  the  so- 
called  "  lyrical  cry  "  be  of  the  essence  of  a  true  lyric,  they 
are  not  true  lyrics  at  all.  Few  of  them  are  free  from  a 
marked  artificiality,  an  almost  rigid  adherence  to  canon. 
Their  range  of  thought  is  not  great ;  their  range  of  feeling 
is  studiously  narrow.  Beside  the  air  and  fire  of  a  lyric  of 
Catullus,  an  ode  of  Horace  for  the  moment  grows  pale 
and  heavy,  cineris  specie  decoloratur.  Beside  one  of  the 
pathetic  half-lines  of  Virgil,  with  their  broken  gleams  and 
murmurs  as  of  another  world,  a  Horatian  phrase  loses  lustre 

*  Supra,  p.  68. 


II.]  Horace.  113 

and  sound.  Yet  Horace  appeals  to  a  tenfold  larger  audience 
than  Catullus  —  to  a  larger  audience,  it  may  even  be  said, 
than  Virgil.  Nor  is  he  a  poets'  poet :  the  refined  and 
exquisite  technique  of  the  Odes  may  be  only  appreciable 
by  a  trained  artist  in  language ;  but  it  is  the  untrained  mind, 
on  whom  other  art  falls  flat,  that  the  art  of  Horace,  by 
some  unique  penetrative  power,  kindles  and  quickens. 
His  own  phrase  of  "  golden  mediocrity  "  expresses  with 
some  truth  the  paradox  of  his  poetry ;  in  no  other  poet, 
ancient  or  modern,  has  such  studied  and  unintermitted 
mediocrity  been  wrought  in  pure  gold.  By  some  tact  or 
instinct —  the  "  felicity,"  which  is  half  of  the  famous  phrase 
in  which  he  is  characterised  by  Petronius  —  he  realised  that, 
limited  as  his  own  range  of  emotion  was,  that  of  mankind 
at  large  was  still  more  so,  and  that  the  cardinal  matter  was 
to  strike  in  the  centre.  Wherever  he  finds  himself  on  the 
edge  of  the  range  in  which  his  touch  is  certain,  he  draws 
back  with  a  smile ;  and  so  his  concentrated  effect,  within 
his  limited  but  central  field,  is  unsurpassed,  and  perhaps 
unequalled. 

This  may  partly  explain  how  it  was  that  with  Horace 
the  Latin  lyric  stops  dead.  His  success  was  so  immediate 
and  so  immense  that  it  fixed  the  limit,  so  to  speak,  for 
future  poets  within  the  confined  range  which  he  had  chosen 
to  adopt ;  and  that  range  he  had  filled  so  perfectly  that  no 
room  was  left  for  anything  but  imitation  on  the  one  hand, 
or,  on  the  other,  such  a  painful  avoidance  of  imitation  as 
would  be  equally  disastrous  in  its  results.  With  the 
principal  lyric  metres,  too,  the  sapphic  and  alcaic,  he  had 
done  what  Virgil  had  done  with  the  dactylic  hexameter, 
carried  them  to  the  highest  point  of  which  the  foreign  Latin 
tongue  was  capable.  They  were  naturalised,  but  remained 
sterile.  When  at  last  Latin  lyric  poetry  took  a  new  develop- 
ment, it  was  by  starting  afresh  from  a  wholly  different  point, 
and  by  a  reversion  to  types  which,  for  the  culture  of  the 
early  imperial  age,  were  obsolete  and  almost  non-existent. 
i 


H4  Latin  Literature.  [II 

The  phrase,  verbis  felicissime  audax,  used  of  Horace  as 
a  lyric  poet  by  Quintilian,  expresses,  with  something  less 
than  that  fine  critic's  usual  accuracy,  another  quality  which 
goes  far  to  make  the  merit  of  the  Odes.  Horace's  use  of 
words  is,  indeed,  remarkably  dexterous ;  but  less  so  from 
happy  daring  than  from  the  tact  which  perpetually  poises 
and  balances  words,  and  counts  no  pains  lost  to  find  the 
word  that  is  exactly  right.  His  audacities  —  if  one  cares  to 
call  them  sOf —  in  the  use  of  epithet,  in  Greek  constructions 
(which  he  uses  rather  more  freely  than  any  other  Latin 
poet),  and  in  allusive  turns  of  phrase,  are  all  carefully 
calculated  and  precisely  measured.  His  unique  power  of 
compression  is  not  that  of  the  poet  who  suddenly  flashes 
out  in  a  golden  phrase,  but  more  akin  to  the  art  of  the 
distiller  who  imprisons  an  essence,  or  the  gem-engraver 
working  by  minute  touches  on  a  fragment  of  translucent 
stone.  With  very  great  resources  of  language  at  his  disposal, 
he  uses  them  with  singular  and  scrupulous  frugality ;  in  his 
measured  epithets,  his  curious  fondness  for  a  number  of 
very  simple  and  abstract  words,  and  the  studious  simplicity 
of  effect  in  his  most  elaborately  designed  lyrics,  he  reminds 
one  of  the  method  of  Greek  bas-reliefs,  or,  still  more  (after 
allowing  for  all  the  difference  made  by  religious  feeling), 
of  the  sculptured  work  of  Mino  of  Fiesole,  with  its  pale 
colours  and  carefully  ordered  outlines.  Phrases  of  ordinary 
prose,  which  he  uses  freely,  do  not,  as  in  Virgil's  hands, 
turn  into  poetry  by  his  mere  use  of  them ;  they  give  rather 
than  receive  dignity  in  his  verses,  and  only  in  a  few  rare 
instances,  like  the  stately  Motum  ex  Metello  consult  civicum, 
are  they  completely  fused  into  the  structure  of  the  poem. 
So,  too,  his  vivid  and  clearly-cut  descriptions  of  nature  in 
single  lines  and  phrases  stand  out  by  themselves  like  golden 
tesserae  in  a  mosaic,  each  distinct  in  a  glittering  atmosphere 
—  qua  tumidus  rigat  arva  Nilus  ;  opacam  porticus  excipiebat 
Arc  ton  ;  nee  prata  canis  albicant  pruinis — a  hundred  phrases 
like  these,  all  exquisitely  turned,  and  all  with  the  same 


n.]  Horace.  115 

effect  of  detachment,  which  makes  them  akin  to  sculpture, 
rather  than  painting  or  music.  Virgil,  as  we  learn  from 
an  interesting  fragment  of  biography,  wrote  his  first  drafts 
swiftly  and  copiously,  and  wrought  them  down  by  long 
labour  into  their  final  structure ;  with  Horace  we  may 
rather  imagine  that  words  came  to  the  surface  slowly  and 
one  by  one,  and  that  the  Odes  grew  like  the  deposit,  cell 
by  cell,  of  the  honeycomb  to  which,  in  a  later  poem,  he 
compares  his  own  workmanship.  In  some  passages  where 
the  Odes  flag,  it  seems  as  though  material  had  failed  him 
before  the  poem  was  finished,  and  he  had  filled  in  the  gaps, 
not  as  he  wished,  but  as  he  could,  yet  always  with  the  same 
deliberate  gravity  of  workmanship. 

Horatii  curiosa  felicitas  —  this,  one  of  the  earliest  criti- 
cisms made  on  the  Odes,  remains  the  phrase  which  most 
completely  describes  their  value.  Such  minute  elaboration, 
on  so  narrow  a  range  of  subject,  and  within  such  confined 
limits  of  thought  and  feeling,  could  only  be  redeemed  from 
dulness  by  the  perpetual  felicity  —  something  between  luck 
and  skill  —  that  was  Horace's  secret.  How  far  it  was  happy 
chance,  how  far  deliberately  aimed  at  and  attained,  is  a 
question  which  brings  us  before  one  of  the  insoluble 
problems  of  art;  we  may  remind  ourselves  that,  in  the 
words  of  the  Greek  dramatist  Agathon,  which  Aristotle  was 
so  fond  of  quoting,  skill  and  chance  in  all  art  cling  close 
to  one  another.  "Safe  in  his  golden  mediocrity,"  to  use 
the  words  of  his  own  counsel  to  Licinius,  Horace  has  some- 
how or  another  taken  deep  hold  of  the  mind,  and  even  the 
imagination,  of  mankind.  This  very  mediocrity,  so  fine,  so 
chastened,  so  certain,  is  in  truth  as  inimitable  as  any  other 
great  artistic  quality ;  we  must  fall  back  on  the  word  genius, 
and  remember  that  genius  does  not  confine  itself  within 
the  borders  of  any  theory,  but  works  its  own  wilL 

With  the  publication  of  the  three  books  of  the  Odes,  and 
the  first  book  of  the  Epistles,  Horace's  finest  and  maturest 
work  was  complete.  In  the  twelve  years  of  his  life  which 


n6  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

were  still  to  run  he  published  but  little,  nor  is  there  any 
reason  to  suppose  that  he  wrote  more  than  he  published. 
In  17  B.C.,  he  composed,  by  special  command,  an  ode  to 
be  sung  at  the  celebration  of  the  Secular  Games.  The  task 
was  one  in  which  he  was  much  hampered  by  a  stringent 
religious  convention,  and  the  result  is  interesting,  but  not 
very  happy.  We  may  admire  the  skill  with  which  formu- 
laries of  the  national  worship  are  moulded  into  the  sapphic 
stanza,  and  prescribed  language,  hardly,  if  at  all,  removed 
from  prose,  made  to  run  in  stately,  though  stiff  and  monot- 
onous, verse ;  but  our  admiration  is  of  the  ingenuity,  not  of 
the  poetry.  The  Jubilee  Ode  written  by  Lord  Tennyson 
is  curiously  like  the  Carmen  Seculare  in  its  metrical  in- 
genuities, and  in  the  way  in  which  the  unmistakeable 
personal  note  of  style  sounds  through  its  heavy  and  formal 
movement. 

Four  years  later  a  fourth  book  of  Odes  was  published,  the 
greater  part  of  which  consists  of  poems  less  distinctly  official 
than  the  Secular  Hymn,  but  written  with  reference  to  public 
affairs  by  the  direct  command  of  the  Emperor,  some  in 
celebration  of  the  victories  of  Drusus  and  Tiberius  on  the 
north-eastern  frontier,  and  others  in  more  general  praise  of 
the  peace  and  external  prosperity  established  throughout 
Italy  under  the  new  government.  Together  with  these 
official  pieces  he  included  some  others  :  an  early  sketch  for 
the  Carmen  Seculare,  a  curious  fragment  of  literary  criticism 
in  the  form  of  an  ode  addressed  to  one  of  the  young  aris- 
tocrats who  followed  the  fashion  of  the  Augustan  age  in 
studying  and  writing  poetry,  and  eight  pieces  of  the  same 
kind  as  his  earlier  odes,  written  at  various  times  within  the 
ten  years  which  had  now  passed  since  the  publication  of 
the  first  three  books.  An  introductory  poem,  of  graceful 
but  half-ironical  lamentation  over  the  passing  of  youth, 
seems  placed  at  the  head  of  the  little  collection  in  studious 
depreciation  of  its  importance.  Had  it  not  been  for  the 
necessity  of  publishing  the  official  odes,  it  is  probable 


II.]  Horace.  117 

enough  that  Horace  would  have  left  these  few  later  lyrics 
ungathered.  They  show  the  same  care  and  finish  in 
workmanship  as  the  rest,  but  there  is  a  certain  loss  of 
brilliance ;  except  one  ode  of  mellow  and  refined  beauty, 
the  famous  Diffugere  nives,  they  hardly  reach  the  old  level. 
The  creative  impulse  in  Horace  had  never  been  very 
powerful  or  copious;  with  growing  years  he  became  less 
interested  in  the  achievement  of  literary  artifice,  and  turned 
more  completely  to  his  other  great  field,  the  criticism  of 
life  and  literature.  To  the  concluding  years  of  his  life 
belong  the  three  delightful  essays  in  verse  which  complete 
the  list  of  his  works.  Two  of  these,  which  are  placed 
together  as  a  second  book  of  Epistles,  seem  to  have  been 
published  at  about  the  same  time  as  the  fourth  book  of  the 
Odes.  The  first,  addressed  to  the  Emperor,  contains  the 
most  matured  and  complete  expression  of  his  views  on 
Latin  poetry,  and  is  in  great  measure  a  vindication  of  the 
poetry  of  his  own  age  against  the  school  which,  partly  from 
literary  and  partly  from  political  motives,  persisted  in  giving 
a  preference  to  that  of  the  earlier  Republic.  In  the  second, 
inscribed  to  one  of  his  younger  friends  belonging  to  the 
circle  of  Tiberius,  he  reviews  his  own  life  as  one  who  was 
now  done  with  literature  and  literary  fame,  and  was  giving 
himself  up  to  the  pursuit  of  wisdom.  The  melancholy  of 
temperament  and  advancing  age  is  subtly  interwoven  in  his 
final  words  with  the  urbane  humour  and  strong  sense  that 
had  been  his  companions  through  life  :  — 

Lusisti  satis,  edisti  satis  atque  bibisti, 
Tempus  abire  tibi  est,  ne  potum  largius  aequo 
Rideat  et pulset  lasciva  decentius  aetas. 

A  new  generation,  clever,  audacious,  and  corrupt,  had 
silently  been  growing  up  under  the  Empire.  Ovid  was 
thirty,  and  had  published  his  Amores.  The  death  of  Virgil 
had  left  the  field  of  serious  poetry  to  little  men.  The 
younger  race  had  learned  only  too  well  the  lesson  of  minute 


Ii8  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

care  and  formal  polish  so  elaborately  taught  them  by  the 
earlier  Augustan  poets,  and  had  caught  the  ear  of  the  town 
with  work  of  superficial  but,  for  the  time,  captivating 
brilliance.  Gloom  was  already  beginning  to  gather  round 
the  Imperial  household ;  the  influence  of  Maecenas,  the 
great  support  of  letters  for  the  last  twenty  years,  was  fast  on 
the  wane.  In  the  words  just  quoted,  with  their  half-sad 
and  half-mocking  echo  of  the  famous  passage  of  Lucretius,* 
Horace  bids  farewell  to  poetry. 

But  literary  criticism,  in  which  he  had  so  fine  a  taste,  and 
on  which  he  was  a  recognised  authority,  continued  to 
interest  him ;  and  the  more  seriously  minded  of  the  younger 
poets  turned  to  him  for  advice,  which  he  was  always  willing 
to  give.  The  Epistle  to  the  Pisos,  known  more  generally 
under  the  name  of  the  Art  of  Poetry,  seems  to  have  been 
composed  at  intervals  during  these  later  years,  and  was, 
perhaps,  not  published  till  after  his  death  in  the  year  8  B.C. 
It  is  a  discussion  of  dramatic  poetry,  largely  based  on 
Greek  text-books,  but  full  of  Horace's  own  experience  and 
of  his  own  good  sense.  Young  aspirants  to  poetical  fame 
regularly  began  with  tragedies ;  and  Horace,  accepting  this 
as  an  actual  fact,  discusses  the  rules  of  tragedy  with  as 
much  gravity  as  if  he  were  dealing  with  some  really  living 
and  national  form  of  poetry.  This  discursive  and  fragmentary 
essay  was  taken  in  later  ages  as  an  authoritative  treatise ; 
and  the  views  expressed  by  Horace  on  a  form  of  poetical 
art  with  which  he  had  little  practical  acquaintance  had, 
at  the  revival  of  literature,  and  even  down  to  last  century, 
an  immense  influence  over  the  structure  and  development 
of  the  drama.  Just  as  modern  comedy  based  itself  on 
imitation  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  and  as  the  earliest 
attempts  at  tragedy  followed  haltingly  in  the  steps  of 
Seneca,  so  as  regards  the  theory  of  both,  Horace,  and  not 
the  Greeks,  was  the  guiding  influence. 

Among  the  many  amazing  achievements  of  the  Greek 

*  Supra,  p.  48. 


II.]  Horace.  1 19 

genius  in  the  field  of  human  thought  were  a  lyrical  poetry 
of  unexampled  beauty,  a  refined  critical  faculty,  and,  later 
than  the  great  thinkers  and  outside  of  the  strict  schools,  a 
temperate  philosophy  of  life  such  as  we  see  afterwards  in  the 
beautiful  personality  of  Plutarch.  In  all  these  three  Horace 
interpreted  Greece  to  the  world,  while  adding  that  peculiarly 
Roman  urbanity  —  the  spirit  at  once  of  the  grown  man  as 
distinguished  from  children,  of  the  man  of  the  world,  and 
of  the  gentleman  —  which  up  till  now  has  been  a  dominant 
ideal  over  the  thought  and  life  of  Europe,, 


ra. 

PROPERTIUS  AND  THE  ELEGISTS. 

THOSE  years  of  the  early  Empire  in  which  the  names 
of  Virgil  and  Horace  stand  out  above  all  the  rest  were 
a  period  of  great  fertility  in  Latin  poetry.  Great  poets 
naturally  bring  small  poets  after  them ;  and  there  was  no 
age  at  Rome  in  which  the  art  was  more  assiduously 
practised  or  more  fashionable  in  society.  The  Court  set  a 
tone  which  was  followed  in  other  circles,  and  more  espe- 
cially among  the  younger  men  of  the  old  aristocracy,  now 
largely  excluded  from  the  public  life  which  had  engrossed 
their  parents  under  the  Republic.  The  influence  of  the 
Alexandrian  poets,  so  potent  in  the  age  of  Catullus,  was 
not  yet  exhausted ;  and  a  wider  culture  had  now  made  the 
educated  classes  familiar  with  the  whole  range  of  earlier 
Greek  poetry  as  well.  Rome  was  full  of  highly  educated 
Greek  scholars,  some  of  whom  were  themselves  poets  of 
considerable  merit.  It  was  the  fashion  to  form  libraries ; 
the  public  collection,  formed  by  Augustus,  and  housed  in 
a  sumptuous  building  on  the  Palatine,  was  only  the  largest 
among  many  others  in  the  great  houses  of  Rome.  The 
earlier  Latin  poets  had  known  only  a  small  part  of  Greek 
literature,  and  that  very  imperfectly;  their  successors  had 
been  trammelled  by  too  exclusive  an  admiration  of  the 
Greek  of  the  decadence.  Virgil  and  Horace,  though  pro- 
fessed students  of  the  Alexandrians,  had  gone  back  them- 
selves, and  had  recalled  the  attention  of  the  public,  to  the 

120 


III.]  Augustan   Tragedy.  121 

poets  of  free  Greece,  and  had  stimulated  the  widely  felt 
longing  to  conquer  the  whole  field  of  poetry  for  the  Latin 
tongue. 

For  this  attempt,  tradition  and  circumstance  finally 
proved,  too  strong ;  and  Augustan  poetry,  outside  of  these 
two  great  names,  is  largely  a  chronicle  of  failure.  This 
was  most  eminently  so  in  the  drama.  Augustan  tragedy 
seems  never  to  have  risen  for  a  moment  beyond  mere 
academic  exercises.  Of  the  many  poets  who  attempted  it, 
nothing  survives  beyond  a  string  of  names.  Lucius  Varius 
Rufus,  the  intimate  friend  of  both  Virgil  and  Horace,  and 
one  of  the  two  joint- editors  of  the  Aeneid  after  the  death 
of  the  former,  wrote  one  tragedy,  on  the  story  of  Thyestes, 
which  was  acted  with  applause  at  the  games  held  to 
celebrate  the  victory  of  Actium,  and  obtained  high  praise 
from  later  critics.  But  he  does  not  appear  to  have  repeated 
the  experiment ;  like  so  many  other  Latin  poets,  he  turned 
to  the  common  path  of  annalistic  epic.  Augustus  himself 
began  a  tragedy  of  Ajax,  but  never  finished  it.  Gaius 
Asinius  Pollio,  the  first  orator  and  critic  of  the  period,  and 
a  magnificent  patron  of  art  and  science,  also  composed 
tragedies  more  on  the  antique  model  of  Accius  and  Pacuvius, 
in  a  dry  and  severe  manner.  But  neither  in  these,  nor 
in  the  work  of  the  young  men  for  whose  benefit  Horace 
wrote  the  Epistle  to  the  Pisos,  was  there  any  real  vitality ; 
the  precepts  of  Horace  could  no  more  create  a  school 
of  tragedians  than  his  example  could  create  a  school  of 
lyric  poets. 

The  poetic  forms,  on  the  other  hand,  used  by  Virgil  were 
so  much  more  on  the  main  line  of  tendency  that  he  stands 
among  a  large  number  of  others,  some  of  whom  might  have 
had  a  high  reputation  but  for  his  overwhelming  superiority. 
Of  the  other  essays  made  in  this  period  in  bucolic  poetry 
we  know  too  little  to  speak  with  any  confidence.  But 
both  didactic  poetry  and  the  little  epic  were  largely  culti- 
vated, and  the  greater  epic  itself  was  not  without  followers. 


122  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

The  extant  poems  of  the  Culex  and  Ciris  have  already 
been  noted  as  showing  with  what  skill  and  grace  unknown 
poets,  almost  if  not  absolutely  contemporary  with  Virgil, 
could  use  the  slighter  epic  forms.  Varius,  when  he 
abandoned  tragedy,  wrote  epics  on  the  death  of  Julius 
Caesar,  and  on  the  achievements  of  Agrippa.  The  few 
fragments  of  the  former  which  survive  show  a  remarkable 
power  and  refinement ;  Virgil  paid  them  the  sincerest  of 
all  compliments  by  conveying,  not  once  only  but  again  and 
again,  whole  lines  of  Varius  into  his  own  work.  Another 
intimate  friend  of  Virgil,  Aemilius  Macer  of  Verona,  wrote 
didactic  poems  in  the  Alexandrian  manner  on  several 
branches  of  natural  history,  which  were  soon  eclipsed  by  the 
fame  of  the  Georgics,  but  remained  a  model  for  later 
imitators  of  Nicander.  One  of  these,  a  younger  contem- 
porary of  Virgil  called  Gratius,  or  Grattius,  was  the  author 
of  a  poem  on  hunting,  still  extant  in  an  imperfect  form. 
In  its  tame  and  laboured  correctness  it  is  only  interesting 
as  showing  the  early  decay  of  the  Virgilian  manner  in  the 
hands  of  inferior  men. 

A  more  interesting  figure,  and  one  the  loss  of  whose 
works  is  deeply  to  be  regretted,  is  that  of  Gaius  Cornelius 
Gallus,  the  earliest  and  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  the 
Augustan  poets.  Like  Varro  Atacinus,  he  was  born  in 
Narbonese  Gaul,  and  brought  into  Roman  poetry  a  new 
touch  of  Gallic  vivacity  and  sentiment.  The  year  of  his 
birth  was  the  same  as  that  of  Virgil's,  but  his  genius  matured 
much  earlier,  and  before  the  composition  of  the  Eclogues  he 
was  already  a  celebrated  poet,  as  well  as  a  distinguished 
man  of  action.  The  history  of  his  life,  with  its  swift  rise 
from  the  lowest  fortune  to  the  splendid  viceroyalty  of 
Egypt,  and  his  sudden  disgrace  and  death  at  the  age  of 
forty-three,  is  one  of  the  most  dramatic  in  Roman  history. 
The  translations  from  Euphorion,  by  which  he  first  made 
his  reputation,  followed  the  current  fashion ;  but  about  the 
same  time  he  introduced  a  new  kind  of  poetry,  the  erotic 


III.]  Callus.  123 

elegy,  which  had  a  swift  and  far-reaching  success.  To 
Gallus,  more  than  to  any  other  single  poet,  is  due  the 
naturalisation  in  Latin  of  the  elegiac  couplet,  which,  together 
with  the  lyrics  of  Horace  and  the  Virgilian  hexameter, 
makes  up  the  threefold  poetical  achievement  of  the  Augustan 
period,  and  which,  after  the  Latin  lyric  had  died  out  with 
Horace  himself,  halved  the  field  with  the  hexameter.  For 
the  remaining  literature  of  the  Empire,  for  that  of  the  Middle 
Ages  so  far  as  it  followed  classical  models,  and  even  for 
that  of  the  Renaissance,  which  carries  us  down  to  within 
a  measurable  distance  of  the  present  day,  the  hexameter  as 
fixed  by  Virgil,  and  the  elegiac  as  popularised  by  Gallus 
and  rapidly  brought  to  perfection  by  his  immediate  followers, 
are  the  only  two  poetical  forms  of  real  importance. 

The  elegiac  couplet  had,  of  course,  been  in  use  at  Rome 
long  before ;  Ennius  himself  had  employed  it,  and  in  the 
Ciceronian  age  Catullus  had  written  in  it  largely,  and  not 
without  success.  But  its  successful  use  had  been  hitherto 
mainly  confined  to  short  pieces,  such  as  would  fall  within 
the  definition  of  the  Greek  epigram.  The  four  books 
of  poems  in  which  Gallus  told  the  story  of  his  passion 
for  the  courtesan  Cytheris  (the  Lycoris  of  the  tenth 
Eclogue)  showed  the  capacities  of  the  metre  in  a  new  light. 
The  fashion  they  set  was  at  once  followed  by  a  crowd  of 
poets.  The  literary  circles  of  Maecenas  and  Messalla  had 
each  their  elegiac  poet  of  the  first  eminence ;  and  the  early 
death  of  both  Propertius  and  Tibullus  was  followed,  amid 
the  decline  of  the  other  forms  of  the  earlier  Augustan 
poetry,  by  the  consummate  brilliance  of  Ovid. 

Of  the  Augustan  elegiac  poets,  Sextus  Propertius,  a  native 
of  Assisi  in  Umbria,  and  introduced  at  a  very  early  age  to 
the  circle  of  Maecenas,  is  much  the  most  striking  and 
interesting  figure,  not  only  from  the  formal  merit  of  his 
poetry,  but  as  representing  a  type  till  then  almost  unknown 
in  ancient  literature.  Of  his  life  little  is  known.  Like 
Virgil,  he  lost  his  patrimonial  property  in  the  confiscations 


124  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

which  followed  the  Civil  war,  but  he  was  then  a  mere  child. 
He  seems  to  have  been  introduced  to  imperial  patronage 
by  the  publication  of  the  first  book  of  his  Elegies  at  the  age 
of  about  twenty.  He  died  young,  before  he  was  thirty-five, 
if  we  may  draw  an  inference  from  the  latest  allusions  in  his 
extant  poems ;  he  had  then  written  four  other  books  of 
elegiac  pieces,  which  were  probably  published  separately 
at  intervals  of  a  few  years.  In  the  last  book  there  is  a 
noticeable  widening  of  range  of  subject,  which  foreshadows 
the  further  development  that  elegiac  verse  took  in  the 
hands  of  Ovid  soon  after  his  death. 

In  striking  contrast  to  Virgil  or  Horace,  Propertius  is 
a  genius  of  great  and,  indeed,  phenomenal  precocity.  His 
first  book  of  Elegies,  the  Cynthia  monobiblos  of  the  gram- 
marians, was  a  literary  feat  comparable  to  the  early  achieve- 
ments of  Keats  or  Byron.  The  boy  of  twenty  had  already 
mastered  the  secret  of  elegiac  verse,  which  even  Catullus 
had  used  stiffly  and  awkwardly,  and  writes  it  with  an  ease, 
a  colour,  a  sumptuousness  of  rhythm  which  no  later  poet 
ever  equalled.  The  splendid  cadence  of  the  opening 
couplet  — 

Cynthia  prima  suis  miserum  me  cepitocettis 
Contactum  nullis  ante  cupidinibus  — 

must  have  come  on  its  readers  with  the  shock  of  a  new 
revelation.  Nothing  like  it  had  ever  been  written  in  Latin 
before :  itself  and  alone  it  assures  a  great  future  to  the 
Latin  elegiac.  His  instinct  for  richness  of  sound  is  equally 
conspicuous  where  it  is  found  in  purely  Latin  phrases,  as  in 
the  opening  of  the  sixteenth  elegy  — 

Quae  fueram  magnis  olim  patefacta  triumphis 
lanua  Tarpeiae  nota  pudicitiae 

Cuius  inaurati  celebrarunt  limina  currus 
Captorum  lacrimis  umida  supplicibus, 

and  where  it  depends  on  a  lavish  use  of  Greek  ornament,  as 
in  the  opening  of  the  third  — 


III.]  Propertius.  125 

Qualis  Thesea  iacuit  cedente  carina 

Languida  desertis  Gnosia  litoribus, 

Qualis  et  accubuit primo  Cephe'ia  somno 
Libera  iam  duris  cotibus  Andromede. 

Even  when  one  comes  to  them  fresh  from  Virgil,  lines  like 
these  open  a  new  world  of  sound.  The  Greek  elegiac,  as  it 
is  known  to  us  by  the  finest  work  of  the  epigrammatists,  had 
an  almost  unequalled  flexibility  and  elasticity  of  rhythm ; 
this  quality  Propertius  from  the  first  seized,  and  all  but 
made  his  own.  By  what  course  of  reasoning  he  was  led  in 
his  later  work  to  suppress  this  large  and  elastic  treatment, 
and  approximate  more  and  more  closely  to  the  fine  but 
somewhat  limited  and  metallic  rhythm  which  hag  been 
perpetuated  by  the  usage  of  Ovid,  we  cannot  guess.  In 
this  first  book  he  ends  the  pentameter  freely  with  words  of 
three,  four,  and  five  syllables ;  the  monotony  of  the  per- 
petual dissyllabic  termination,  which  afterwards  became  the 
normal  usage,  is  hardly  compensated  by  the  increased 
smoothness  which  it  gives  the  verse. 

But  this  new  power  of  versification  accompanied  a  new 
spirit  even  more  remarkable,  which  is  of  profound  import 
as  the  precursor  of  a  whole  school  of  modern  European 
poetry.  The  Cynthia  is  the  first  appearance  in  literature 
of  the  neurotic  young  man,  who  reappeared  last  century 
in  Rousseau's  Confessions  and  Goethe's  Werther,  and  who 
has  dominated  a  whole  side  of  French  literature  since 
Alfred  de  Musset.  The  way  had  been  shown  half  a 
century  before  by  that  remarkable  poet,  Meleager  of 
Gadara,  whom  Propertius  had  obviously  studied  with  keen 
appreciation.  Phrases  in  the  Cynthia,  like  — 

Turn  mihi  constantis  deiecit  lumina  fastus 
Et  caput  impositis  prcssit  Amor  pedibus, 
or  — 

Qui  non  ante  patet  donee  manus  attigit  ossa, 

are   in  the   essential   spirit   of  Meleager,  and,  though   not 


l?6  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

verbally  copied  from  him,  have  the  precise  quality  of  his 
rhythms  and  turns  of  phrase.  But  the  abandonment  to 
sensibility,  the  absorption  in  self-pity  and  the  sentiment 
of  passion,  are  carried  by  Propertius  to  a  far  greater  length. 
The  self-abasement  of  a  line  like  — 

Sis  quodcumque  voles,  non  aliena  fa  men, 

is  in  the  strongest  possible  contrast  to  that  powerful 
passion  which  fills  the  poetry  of  Catullus,  or  to  the 
romantic  tenderness  of  the  Eclogues ;  and  in  the  extraordi- 
nary couplet  — 

Me  sine,  quern  semper  voluit  fortuna  iacere, 
Hanc  animam  extremae  reddere  nequitiae, 

"  the  expense  of  spirit  in  a  waste  of  shame  "  reaches  its 
culminating  point.  This  tremulous  self-absorption,  rather 
than  any  defect  of  eye  or  imagination,  is  the  reason  of 
the  extraordinary  lapses  which  now  and  then  he  makes 
both  in  description  and  in  sentiment.  The  vivid  and 
picturesque  sketches  he  gives  of  fashionable  life  at  watering- 
places  and  country-houses  in  the  eleventh  and  fourteenth 
elegies,  or  single  touches,  like  that  in  the  remarkable 
couplet  — 

Me  mediae  nodes,  me  sidera  prona  iacentem, 
Frigidaque  Eoo  me  dolet  aura  gelu, 

show  that  where  he  was  interested  neither  his  eye  nor  his 
language  had  any  weakness ;  but,  as  a  rule,  he  is  not 
interested  either  in  nature  or,  if  the  truth  be  told,  in 
Cynthia,  but  wholly  in  himself.  He  ranks  among  the 
most  learned  of  the  Augustan  poets ;  but,  for  want  of  the 
rigorous  training  and  self-criticism  in  which  Virgil  and 
Horace  spent  their  lives,  he  made  on  the  whole  but  a 
weak  and  ineffective  use  of  a  natural  gift  perhaps  equal 
to  either  of  theirs.  Thus  it  is  that  his  earliest  work  is 
at  the  same  time  his  most  fascinating  and  brilliant.  After 
the  Cynthia  he  rapidly  became,  in  the  mordant  phrase 


III.j  Propertius.  127 

used  by  Heine  of  De  Musset,  un  jeune  homme  (Tun  bien 
6eati  passe.  Some  premonition  of  early  death  seems  to 
have  haunted  him ;  and  the  want  of  self-control  in  his 
poetry  may  reflect  actual  physical  weakness  united  with 
his  vivid  imagination. 

The  second  and  third  books  of  the  Elegies?  though 
they  show  some  technical  advance,  and  are  without  the 
puerilities  which  here  and  there  occur  in  the  Cynthia, 
are  on  the  whole  immensely  inferior  to  it  in  interest  and 
charm.  There  is  still  an  occasional  line  of  splendid 
beauty,  like  the  wonderful  — 

Sunt  apud  infernos  tot  milia  formosarum  ; 

an  occasional  passage  of  stately  rhythm,  like  the  lines 
beginning  — 

Quandocunque  igitur  nostros  mors  clausit  o cellos  ; 

but  the  smooth  versification  has  now  few  surprises ;  the 
learning  is  becoming  more  mechanical ;  there  is  a  tendency 
to  say  over  again  what  he  had  said  before,  and  not  to  say 
it  quite  so  well. 

Through  these  two  books  Cynthia  is  still  the  main 
subject.  But  with  the  advance  of  years,  and  his  own 
growing  fame  as  a  poet,  his  passion  —  if  that  can  be  called 
a  passion  which  was  so  self-conscious  and  so  sentimental  — 
fell  away  from  him,  and  left  his  desire  for  literary  repu- 
tation the  really  controlling  motive  of  his  work.  In  the 
introductory  poem  to  the  fourth  book  there  is  a  new  and 
almost  aggressive  tone  with  regard  to  his  own  position 
among  the  Roman  poets,  which  is  in  strong  contrast  to 
the  modesty  of  the  epilogue  to  the  third  book.  The 
inflated  invocation  of  the  ghost  of  Callimachus  laid  him 
fatally  open  to  the  quietly  disdainful  reference  by  which, 
without  even  mentioning  Propertius  by  name,  Horace  met 

*  These  are  the  two  parts  of  what  is  printed  as  book  ii.  in  the  older 
editions. 


128  Latin  Literature  pi. 

At  a  year  or  two  later  in  the  second  book  of  the  Epistles 
But  even  Horace  is  not  infallible ;  and  Propertius  was,  at 
all  events,  justified  in  regarding  himself  as  the  head  of  a 
new  school  of  poetry,  and  one  which  struck  its  roots  wide 
and  deep. 

In  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  of  the  Elegies  there  is  a 
wide  range  of  subject ;  the  verse  is  being  tested  for  various 
purposes,  and  its  flexibility  answers  to  almost  every  de- 
mand. But  already  we  feel  its  fatal  facility.  The  passage 
beginning  Atque  ubi  iam  Venerem,  in  the  poem  where  he 
contrasts  his  own  life  with  those  of  the  followers  of  riches 
and  ambition,  is  a  dilution  into  twelve  couplets  of  eight 
noble  lines  of  the  Georgics,  with  an  effect  almost  as  feeble, 
if  not  so  grotesque,  as  that  of  the  later  metaphrasts,  who 
occupied  themselves  in  turning  heroic  into  elegiac  poems 
by  inserting  a  pentameter  between  each  two  lines.  The 
sixth  elegy  of  the  same  book  is  nothing  but  a  cento  of 
translations  from  the  Anthology,  strung  together  and  fastened 
up  at  the  end  by  an  original  couplet  in  the  worst  and 
most  puerile  manner  of  his  early  writing.  On  the  other 
hand,  these  books  include  fresh  work  of  great  merit,  and 
some  of  great  beauty.  The  use  of  the  elegiac  metre  to 
tell  stories  from  Graeco-Roman  mythology  and  legendary 
Roman  history  is  begun  in  several  poems  which,  though 
Propertius  has  not  the  story-telling  gift  of  Ovid,  showed 
the  way  to  the  delightful  narratives  of  the  Fasti.  A  few 
of  the  more  personal  elegies  have  a  new  and  not  very 
agreeable  kind  of  realism,  as  though  De  Musset  had  been 
touched  with  the  spirit  of  Flaubert.  In  one,  the  ninth 
of  the  fourth  book,  the  realism  is  in  a  different  and 
pleasanter  vein;  only  Herrick  among  English  poets  has 
given  such  imaginative  charm  to  straightforward  descrip- 
tions of  the  ordinary  private  life  of  the  middle  classes. 
The  fifth  book  ends  with  the  noble  elegy  on  Cornelia, 
the  wife  of  Paulus  Aemilius  Lepidus,  in  which  all  that 
is  best  in  Propertius'  nature  at  last  finds  splendid  and 


III.]  Propertius,  129 

memorable  expression.  It  has  some  of  his  common  fail- 
ings, —  passages  of  inappropriate  learning,  and  a  little  falling 
off  towards  the  end.  But  where  it  rises  to  its  height,  in 
the  lines  familiar  to  all  who  know  Latin,  it  is  unsurpassed 
in  any  poetry  for  grace  and  tenderness. 

Nunc  tibi  commendo  communia  pignora  natos? 

Haec  euro,  et  cineri  spirat  inusta  meo. 
Fungere  maternis  vicibus  pater :  ilia  meorum 

Omnis  erit  collo  turbafovenda  tuo. 
Oscula  cum  dederis  tua  flentibus,  adice  matris  ; 

Tota  domus  coepit  nunc  onus  esse  tuum. 
Et  siquid  doliturus  en's,  sine  testibus  illis  ! 

Cum  venient,  siccis  oscula  falle  gcnis  : 
Sat  tibi  sint  nodes  quas  de  me,  Paule,fatiges, 

Somniaque  infaciem  reddita  saepe  meam. 

In  these  lines,  hardly  to  be  read  without  tears,  Propertius 
for  once  rises  into  that  clear  air  in  which  art  passes  beyond 
the  reach  of  criticism.  What  he  might  have  done  in 
this  new  manner  had  he  lived  longer  can  only  be  con- 
jectured; at  the  same  age  neither  Virgil  nor  Horace  had 
developed  their  full  genius.  But  the  perpetual  recurrence 
in  the  later  poems  of  that  brooding  over  death,  which  had 
already  marked  his  juvenile  work,  indicates  increasing 
exhaustion  of  power.  Even  the  sparkling  elegy  on  the 
perils  of  a  lover's  rapid  night  journey  from  Rome  to  Tibur 
passes  at  the  end  into  a  sombre  imagination  of  his  own 
grave ;  and  the  fine  and  remarkable  poem  (beginning  with 
the  famous  Sunt  aliquid  Manes}  in  which  the  ghost  of 
Cynthia  visits  him,  is  full  of  the  same  morbid  dwelling 
on  the  world  of  shadows,  where  the  "  golden  girl "  awaits 
her  forgetful  lover.  Atque  hoc  sollicitum  vince  sopore  caput 
had  become  the  sum  of  his  prayers.  But  a  little  while 
afterwards  the  restless  brain  of  the  poet  found  the  sleep 
that  it  had  so  long  desired. 
At  a  time  when  literary  criticism  was  so  powerful  at 

K 


130  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

Rome,  and  poetry  was  ruled  by  somewhat  rigid  canons 
of  taste,  it  is  not  surprising  that  more  stress  was  laid  on 
the  defects  than  on  the  merits  of  Propertius'  poetry.  It 
evidently  annoyed  Horace ;  and  in  later  times  Propertius 
remained  the  favourite  of  a  minority,  while  general  taste 
preferred  the  more  faultless,  if  less  powerfully  original, 
elegiacs  of  his  contemporary,  Albius  Tibullus.  This  pleasing 
and  graceful  poet  was  a  few  years  older  than  Propertius, 
and,  like  him,  died  at  the  age  of  about  thirty-five.  He 
did  not  belong  to  the  group  of  court  poets  who  formed 
the  circle  of  Maecenas,  but  to  a  smaller  school  under 
the  patronage  of  Marcus  Valerius  Messalla,  a  distinguished 
member  of  the  old  aristocracy,  who,  though  accepting  the 
new  government  and  loyal  in  his  service  to  the  Emperor, 
held  somewhat  aloof  from  the  court,  and  lived  in  a  small 
literary  world  of  his  own.  Tibullus  published  in  his  lifetime 
two  books  of  elegiac  poems ;  after  his  death  a  third  volume 
was  published,  containing  a  few  of  his  posthumous  pieces, 
together  with  poems  by  other  members  of  the  same  circle. 
Of  these,  six  are  elegies  by  a  young  poet  of  the  upper 
class,  writing  under  the  name  of  Lygdamus,  and  plausibly 
conjectured  to  have  been  a  near  relative  of  Tibullus.  One, 
a  panegyric  on  Messalla,  by  an  unknown  author,  is  without 
any  poetical  merit,  and  only  interesting  as  an  average 
specimen  of  the  amateur  poetry  of  the  time  when,  in  the 
phrase  of  Horace  — 

Populus  calet  uno 

Scribendi  studio;  pueri patresque  severi 
Fronde  comas  vincti  cenant  et  carmina  dictant. 

The  curious  set  of  little  poems  going  under  the  name 
of  Sulpicia,  and  included  in  the  volume,  will  be  noticed 
later. 

Tibullus  might  be  succinctly  and  perhaps  not  unjustly 
described  as  a  Virgil  without  the  genius.  The  two  poets 
died  in  the  same  year,  and  a  contemporary  epigram  speaks 


III.]  Tibullus.  131 

of  them  as  the  recognised  masters  of  heroic  and  elegiac 
verse  ;  while  the  famous  tribute  of  Ovid,  in  the  third  book 
of  the  Amores,  shows  that  the  death  of  Tibullus  was  regarded 
as  an  overwhelming  loss  by  the  general  world  of  letters. 
"  Pure  and  fine,"  the  well-chosen  epithets  of  Quintilian, 
are  in  themselves  no  slight  praise ;  and  the  poems  reveal 
a  gentleness  of  nature  and  sincerity  of  feeling  which  make 
us  think  of  their  author  less  with  admiration  than  with  a 
sort  of  quiet  affection.  No  two  poets  could  be  more 
strongly  contrasted  than  Tibullus  and  Propertius,  even 
when  their  subject  and  manner  of  treatment  approximate 
most  closely.  In  Tibullus  the  eagerness,  the  audacity,  the 
irregular  brilliance  of  Propertius  are  wholly  absent ;  as  are 
the  feverish  self- consciousness  and  the  want  of  good  taste 
and  good  sense  which  are  equally  characteristic  of  the  latter. 
Poetry  is  with  him,  not  the  outburst  of  passion,  or  the 
fruit  of  high  imagination,  but  the  natural  and  refined 
expression  of  sincere  feeling  in  equable  and  melodious 
verse.  The  delightful  epistle  addressed  to  him  by  Horace 
shows  how  high  he  stood  in  the  esteem  and  affection  of 
a  severe  critic,  and  a  man  whose  friendship  was  not  lightly 
won  or  lavishly  expressed.  He  stands  easily  at  the  head 
of  Latin  poets  of  the  second  order.  In  delicacy,  in  refine- 
ment, in  grace  of  rhythm  and  diction,  he  cannot  be  easily 
surpassed ;  he  only  wants  the  final  and  incommunicable 
touch  of  genius  which  separates  really  great  artists  from  the 
rest  of  the  world. 


IV. 

OVID. 

THE  Peace  of  the  Empire,  secured  by  the  victory  of  Ac- 
tium,  and  fully  established  during  the  years  which  followed 
by  Augustus  and  his  lieutenants,  inaugurated  a  new  era  of 
social  life  in  the  capital.  The  saying  of  Augustus,  that  he 
found  Rome  brick  and  left  it  marble,  may  be  applied 
beyond  the  sphere  of  mere  architectural  decoration.  A 
French  critic  has  well  observed  that  now,  for  the  first  time, 
the  Court  and  the  City  existed  in  their  full  meaning.  Both 
had  an  organised  life  and  a  glittering  external  ease  such 
as  was  hardly  known  again  in  Europe  till  the  reign  of 
the  Grand  Monarque.  The  enormous  accumulated  wealth 
of  the  aristocracy  was  in  the  mass  hardly  touched  by  all 
the  waste  and  confiscations  of  the  civil  wars ;  and,  in  spite 
of  a  more  rigorous  administration,  fresh  accumulations 
were  continually  made  by  the  new  official  hierarchy,  and 
flowed  in  from  all  parts  of  the  Empire  to  feed  the  luxury 
and  splendour  of  the  capital.  Wealth  and  peace,  the  in- 
creasing influence  of  Greek  culture,  and  the  absence  of 
political  excitement,  induced  a  period  of  brilliant  laxity 
among  the  upper  classes.  The  severe  and  frugal  morals 
of  the  Republic  still  survived  in  great  families,  as  well  as 
among  that  middle  class,  from  which  the  Empire  drew 
its  solid  support ;  but  in  fashionable  society  there  was 
a  marked  and  rapid  relaxation  of  morals  which  was  vainly 
combated  by  stringent  social  and  sumptuary  legislation. 

132 


IV.]  Julia  and  Sulpicia.  133 

The  part  taken  by  women  in  social  and  political  life  is 
among  the  most  powerful  factors  in  determining  the  general 
aspect  of  an  age.  This,  which  had  already  been  great 
under  the  later  Republic,  was  now  greater  than  ever.  The 
Empress  Livia  was  throughout  the  reign  of  Augustus, 
and  even  after  his  death,  one  of  the  most  important 
persons  in  Rome.  Partly  under  her  influence,  partly  from 
the  temperament  and  policy  of  Augustus  himself,  a  sort 
of  court  Puritanism  grew  up,  like  that  of  the  later  years  of 
Louis  Quatorze.  The  aristocracy  on  the  whole  disliked 
and  despised  it ;  but  the  monarchy  was  stronger  than  they. 
The  same  gloom  overshadows  the  end  of  these  two  long 
reigns.  Sentences  of  death  or  banishment  fell  thick  among 
the  leaders  of  that  gay  and  profligate  society;  to  later 
historians  it  seemed  that  all  the  result  of  the  imperial  policy 
had  been  to  add  hypocrisy  to  profligacy,  and  incidentally  to 
cripple  and  silence  literature. 

Of  this  later  Augustan  period  Ovid  is  the  representative 
poet.  The  world  in  which  he  lived  may  be  illustrated  by 
a  reference  to  two  ladies  of  his  acquaintance,  both  in 
different  ways  singularly  typical  of  the  time.  Julia,  the 
only  daughter  of  Augustus,  still  a  mere  child  when  her 
father  became  master  of  the  world,  was  brought  up  with 
a  strictness  which  excited  remark  even  among  those  who 
were  familiar  with  the  strict  traditions  of  earlier  times. 
Married,  when  a  girl  of  fourteen,  to  her  cousin,  Marcus 
Claudius  Marcellus ;  after  his  death,  two  years  later,  to 
the  Emperor's  chief  lieutenant,  Marcus  Agrippa;  and  a 
third  time,  when  he  also  died,  to  the  son  of  the  Empress 
Livia,  afterwards  the  Emperor  Tiberius,  —  she  was  through- 
out treated  as  a  part  of  the  State  machinery,  and  as  some- 
thing more  or  less  than  a  woman.  But  she  turned  out 
to  be,  in  fact,  a  woman  whose  beauty,  wit,  and  recklessness 
were  alike  extraordinary,  and  who  rose  in  disastrous  revolt 
against  the  system  in  which  she  was  forced  to  be  a  pivot. 
Alike  by  birth  and  genius  she  easily  took  the  first  place 


134  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

in  Roman  society  ;  and  under  the  very  eyes  of  the  Emperor 
she  multiplied  her  lovers  right  and  left,  and  launched  out 
into  a  career  that  for  years  was  the  scandal  of  all  Rome. 
When  she  had  reached  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  in  the  same 
year  when  Ovid's  Art  of  Love  was  published,  the  axe 
suddenly  fell ;  she  was  banished,  disinherited,  and  kept  till 
her  death  in  rigorous  imprisonment,  almost  without  the 
necessaries  of  life.  Such  were  the  firstfruits  of  the  social 
reform  inaugurated  by  Augustus  and  sung  by  Horace. 

In  the  volume  of  poems  which  includes  the  posthumous 
elegies  of  Tibullus,  there  is  also  contained  a  group  of  short 
pieces  by  another  lady  of  high  birth  and  social  standing, 
a  niece  of  Messalla  and  a  daughter  of  Servius  Sulpicius, 
and  so  belonging  by  both  parents  to  the  inner  circle  of 
the  aristocracy.  Nothing  is  known  of  her  life  beyond  what 
can  be  gathered  from  the  poems.  But  that  they  should 
have  been  published  at  all,  still  more  that  they  should  have 
been  published,  as  they  almost  certainly  were,  with  the 
sanction  of  Messalla,  is  a  striking  instance  of  the  unique 
freedom  enjoyed  by  R.oman  women  of  the  upper  classes, 
and  of  their  disregard  of  the  ordinary  moral  conventions. 
The  only  ancient  parallel  is  in  the  period  of  the  Aeolic 
Greek  civilisation  which  produced  Sappho.  The  poems 
are  addressed  to  her  lover,  who  (according  to  the  fashion 
of  the  time  —  like  Catullus'  Lesbia  or  Propertius'  Cynthia) 
is  spoken  of  by  a  Greek  name,  but  was  most  probably 
a  young  Roman  of  her  own  circle.  The  writer,  a  young, 
and  apparently  an  unmarried  woman,  addresses  him  with 
a  frankness  of  passion  that  has  no  idea  of  concealment. 
She  does  not  even  take  the  pains  to  seal  her  letters  to 
him,  though  they  contain  what  most  women  would  hesitate 
to  put  on  paper.  They  have  all  the  same  directness, 
which  sometimes  becomes  a  splendid  simplicity.  One  note, 
reproaching  him  for  a  supposed  infidelity  — 

Si  tibi  euro,  togae  potior  pressumque  quasillo 
Sc  or  turn  quam  Servi  filia  Sulpicia  — 


IV.]  Ovid.  135 

has  all  the  noble  pride  of  Shakespeare's  Imogen.  Of  the 
world  and  its  ways  she  has  no  girlish  ignorance ;  but  the 
talk  of  the  world,  as  a  motive  for  reticence,  simply  does  not 
exist  for  her. 

Where  young  ladies  of  the  upper  classes  had  such  freedom 
as  is  shown  in  these  poems,  and  used  it,  the  ordinary  lines 
of  demarcation  between  respectable  women  and  women 
who  are  not  respectable  must  have  largely  disappeared. 
It  has  been  much  and  inconclusively  debated  whether  the 
Hostia  and  Plania,  to  whom,  under  assumed  names,  the 
amatory  poems  of  Propertius  and  Tibullus  were  addressed, 
were  more  or  less  married  women  (for  at  Rome  there  were 
degrees  of  marriage),  or  women  for  whom  marriage  was  a 
remote  and  immaterial  event.  The  same  controversy  has 
raged  over  Ovid's  Corinna,  who  is  variously  identified  as 
Julia  the  daughter  of  the  Emperor  herself,  as  a  figment  of 
the  imagination,  or  as  an  ordinary  courtesan.  The  truth  is, 
that  in  the  society  so  brilliantly  drawn  in  the  Art  of  Love, 
such  distinctions  were  for  the  time  suspended,  and  we  are 
in  a  world  which,  though  for  the  time  it  was  living  and 
actual,  is  as  unreal  to  us  as  that  of  the  Restoration  dramatists. 

The  young  lawyer  and  man  of  fashion,  Publius  Ovidius' 
Naso,  who  was  the  laureate  of  this  gay  society,  was  a  few 
years  younger  than  Propertius,  with  whom  he  was  in  close 
and  friendly  intimacy.  The  early"  death  of  both  Propertius 
and  Tibullus  occurred  before  Ovid  published  his  first 
volume ;  and  Horace,  the  last  survivor  of  the  older 
Augustans,  had  died  some  years  before  that  volume  was 
followed  by  any  important  work.  The  period  of  Ovid's 
greatest  fertility  was  the  decad  immediately  following  the 
opening  of  the  Christian  era;  he  outlived  Augustus  by 
three  years,  and  so  laps  over  into  the  sombre  period  of 
the  Julio- Claudian  dynasty,  which  culminated  in  the  reign 
of  Nero. 

As  the  eldest  surviving  son  of  an  opulent  equestrian 
family  of  Upper  Italy,  Ovid  was  trained  for  the  usual 


136  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

career  of  civil  and  judicial  office.  He  studied  for  the  bar 
at  Rome,  and,  though  he  never  worked  hard  at  law,  filled 
several  judicial  offices  of  importance.  But  his  interest  was 
almost  wholly  in  the  rhetorical  side  of  his  profession ;  he 
"  hated  argument ; "  and  from  the  rhetoric  of  the  schools  to 
the  highly  rhetorical  poetry  which  was  coming  into  fashion 
there  was  no  violent  transition.  An  easy  fortune,  a  brilliant 
wit,  an  inexhaustible  memory,  and  an  unfailing  social  tact, 
soon  made  him  a  prominent  figure  in  society ;  and  his 
genuine  love  of  literature  and  admiration  for  genius  — 
unmingled  in  his  case  with  the  slightest  trace  of  literary 
jealousy  or  self-consciousness  —  made  him  the  friend  of  the 
whole  contemporary  world  of  letters.  He  did  not  begin  to 
publish  poetry  very  early ;  not  because  he  had  any  delicacy 
about  doing  so,  nor  because  his  genius  took  long  to  ripen, 
but  from  the  good-humoured  laziness  which  never  allowed 
him  to  take  his  own  poetry  too  seriously.  When  he  was 
about  thirty  he  published,  to  be  in  the  fashion,  a  volume 
of  amatory  elegiacs,  which  was  afterwards  re-edited  and 
enlarged  into  the  existing  three  books  of  Atnores.  Probably 
about  the  same  time  he  formally  graduated  in  serious  poetry 
with  his  tragedy  of  Medea.  For  ten  or  twelve  years  after- 
wards he  continued  to  throw  off  elegiac  poems,  some  light, 
others  serious,  but  all  alike  in  their  easy  polish,  and  written 
from  the  very  first  with  complete  and  effortless  mastery  of 
the  metre.  To  this  period  belong  the  Heroides,  the  later 
pieces  in  the  Amores,  the  elaborate  poem  on  the  feminine 
toilet  called  De  Medicamine  Faciei,  and  other  poems  now 
lost.  Finally,  in  2  or  i  B.C.,  he  published  what  is  perhaps 
on  the  whole  his  most  remarkable  work,  the  three  books 
De  Arte  Amatoria. 

Just  about  the  time  of  the  publication  of  the  Art  of  Love, 
the  exile  of  the  elder  Julia  fell  like  a  thunderbolt  on  Roman 
society.  Staggered  for  a  little  under  the  sudden  blow,  it 
soon  gathered  itself  together  again,  and  a  perpetual  influx 
of  younger  men  ami  .\ ^••.lieied  round  her  daughter 


IV.]  Ovid.  137 

and  namesake,  the  wife  of  Lucius  Aemilius  Paulus,  into 
a  circle  as  corrupt,  if  not  so  accomplished,  as  that  of  which 
Ovid  had  been  a  chief  ornament.  He  was  himself  now 
forty ;  though  singularly  free  from  literary  ambition,  he 
could  not  but  be  conscious  of  his  extraordinary  powers,  and 
willing  to  employ  them  on  larger  work.  He  had  already 
incidentally  proved  that  he  possessed  an  instinct  for 
narrative  such  as  no  Roman  poet  had  hitherto  had  — 
such,  indeed,  as  it  would  be  difficult  to  match  even  in 
Greek  poetry  outside  Homer.  A  born  story-teller,  and 
an  accomplished  master  of  easy  and  melodious  verse,  he 
naturally  turned  for  subjects  to  the  inexhaustible  stores  of 
the  Graeco-Roman  mythology,  and  formed  the  scheme  of 
his  Metamorphoses  and  Fasti.  Both  poems  were  all  but 
complete,  but  only  the  first  half  of  the  latter  had  been 
published,  when,  at  the  end  of  the  year  8,  his  life  and  work 
were  suddenly  shattered  by  a  mysterious  catastrophe.  An 
imperial  edict  ordered  him  to  leave  Rome  on  a  named  day, 
and  take  up  his  residence  at  the  small  barbarous  town  of 
Tomi,  on  the  Black  Sea,  at  the  extreme  outposts  of  civilisa- 
tion. No  reason  was  assigned,  and  no  appeal  allowed. 
The  cause  of  this  sudden  action  on  the  part  of  the  Emperor 
remains  insoluble.  The  only  reason  ever  officially  given, 
that  the  publication  of  the  Art  of  Love  (which  was  already 
ten  years  old)  was  an  offence  against  public  morals,  is  too 
flimsy  to  have  been  ever  meant  seriously.  The  allusions 
Ovid  himself  makes  to  his  own  "  error "  or  "  crime  "  are 
not  meant  to  be  intelligible,  and  none  of  the  many  theories 
which  have  been  advanced  fully  satisfies  the  facts.  But, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  cause  —  whether  Ovid  had 
become  implicated  in  one  of  those  aristocratic  conspiracies 
against  which  Augustus  had  to  exercise  constant  vigilance, 
or  in  the  intrigues  of  the  younger  Julia,  or  in  some  domestic 
scandal  that  touched  the  Emperor  even  more  personally  — 
it  brought  his  literary  career  irretrievably  to  the  ground. 
The  elegies  which  he  continued  to  pour  forth  from  his  place 


138  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

of  exile,  though  not  without  their  grace  and  pathos,  struggle 
almost  from  the  first  under  the  crowning  unhappiness  of  un- 
happiness,  that  it  ceases  to  be  interesting.  The  five  books 
of  the  Tristia,  written  during  the  earlier  years  of  his  banish- 
ment, still  retain,  through  the  monotony  of  their  subject, 
and  the  abject  humility  of  their  attitude  to  Augustus,  much 
of  the  old  dexterity.  In  the  four  books  of  Epistles  from 
Pontus,  which  continue  the  lamentation  over  his  calamities, 
the  failure  of  power  is  evident.  He  went  on  writing  pro- 
fusely, because  there  was  nothing  else  to  do ;  panegyrics 
on  Augustus  and  Tiberius  alternated  with  a  natural  history 
of  fish  —  the  Halieutica  —  and  with  abusive  poems  on  his  real 
or  fancied  enemies  at  Rome.  While  Augustus  lived  he  did 
not  give  up  hopes  of  a  remission,  or  at  least  an  alleviation, 
of  his  sentence ;  but  the  accession  of  Tiberius,  who  never 
forgot  or  forgave  anything,  must  have  extinguished  them 
finally ;  and  he  died  some  three  years  later,  still  a  heart- 
broken exile. 

Apart  from  his  single  tragedy,  from  a  few  didactic  or 
mock-didactic  pieces,  imitated  from  Alexandrian  originals, 
and  from  his  great  poem  of  the  Metamorphoses,  the  whole 
of  Ovid's  work  was  executed  in  the  elegiac  couplet.  His 
earliest  poems  closely  approximate  in  their  management  of 
this  metre  to  the  later  work  of  Propertius.  The  narrower 
range  of  cadence  allowed  by  the  rule  which  makes  every 
couplet  regularly  end  in  a  dissyllable,  involves  a  monotony 
which  only  Ovid's  immense  dexterity  enabled  him  to 
overcome.  In  the  Fasti  this  dexterity  becomes  almost 
portentous  :  when  his  genius  began  to  fail  him,  the  essential 
vice  of  the  metre  is  soon  evident.  But  the  usage  was 
stereotyped  by  his  example  ;  all  through  the  Empire  and 
through  the  Middle  Ages,  and  even  down  to  the  present 
day,  the  Ovidian  metre  has  been  the  single  dominant  type  : 
and  though  no  one  ever  managed  it  with  such  ingenuity 
again,  he  taught  enough  of  the  secret  to  make  its  use 
possible  for  almost  every  kind  of  subject  His  own  elegiac 


IV.]  Ovid.  1 39 

poetry  covers  an  ample  range.  In  the  impassioned  rhetoric 
of  the  Heroides,  the  brilliant  pictures  of  life  and  manners 
in  the  De  Arte  Amatoria,  or  the  sparkling  narratives  of  the 
Fasti,  the  same  sure  and  swift  touch  is  applied  to  widely 
diverse  forms  and  moods.  Ovid  was  a  trained  rhetorician 
and  an  accomplished  man  of  the  world  before  he  began  to 
write  poetry  •  that,  in  spite  of  his  worldliness  and  his 
glittering  rhetoric,  he  has  so  much  of  feeling  and  charm,  is 
the  highest  proof  of  his  real  greatness  as  a  poet. 

But  this  feeling  and  charm  are  the  growth  of  more 
mature  years.  In  his  early  poetry  there  is  no  passion  and 
little  sentiment.  He  writes  of  love,  but  never  as  a  lover ; 
nor,  with  all  his  quickness  of  insight  and  adroitness  of 
impersonation,  does  he  ever  catch  the  lover's  tone.  From 
the  amatory  poems  written  in  his  own  person  one  might 
judge  him  to  be  quite  heartless,  the  mere  hard  and  polished 
mirror  of  a  corrupt  society ;  and  in  the  Art  of  Love  he 
is  the  keen  observer  of  men  and  women  whose  wit  and 
lucid  common  sense  are  the  more  insolently  triumphant 
because  untouched  by  any  sentiment  or  sympathy.  We 
know  him  from  other  sources  to  have  been  a  man  of  really 
warm  and  tender  feeling ;  in  the  poetry  which  he  wrote  as 
laureate  of  the  world  of  fashion  he  keeps  this  out  of  sight, 
and  outdoes  them  all  in  cynical  worldliness.  It  is  only 
when  writing  in  the  person  of  a  woman  —  as  in  the  Phyllis 
or  Laodamia  of  the  Heroides  —  that  he  allows  himself  any 
approach  to  tenderness.  The  Ars  Amatoria,  full  as  it  is  of 
a  not  unkindly  humour,  of  worldly  wisdom  and  fine  insight, 
is  perhaps  the  most  immoral  poem  ever  written.  The  most 
immoral,  not  the  most  demoralizing :  he  writes  for  an 
audience  for  whom  morality,  apart  from  the  code  of 
good  manners  which  society  required,  did  not  exist ;  and 
wholly  free  as  it  is  from  morbid  sentiment,  the  one  great 
demoralizing  influence  over  men  and  women,  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  the  poem  is  one  which  ever  did  any 
reader  serious  harm,  while,  few  works  are  more  intellectually 


140  Latin  Literature.  pi. 

stimulating  within  a  certain  limited  range.  To  readers  for 
whom  its  qualities  have  exhausted  or  have  not  acquired 
their  stimulating  force,  it  merely  is  tiresome ;  and  this, 
indeed,  is  the  fate  which  in  the  present  age,  when  wit  is  not 
in  vogue,  has  very  largely  overtaken  it. 

Interspersed  in  the  Art  of  Love  are  a  number  of  stories 
from  the  old  mythology,  introduced  to  illustrate  the  argu- 
ment, but  set  out  at  greater  length  than  was  necessary  for 
that  purpose,  from  the  active  pleasure  it  always  gives  Ovid 
to  tell  a  story.  When  he  conceived  the  plan  of  his  Meta- 
morphoses, he  had  recognised  this  narrative  instinct  as  his 
special  gift.  His  tragedy  of  Medea  had  remained  a  single 
effort  in  dramatic  form,  unless  the  Heroides  can  be  classed 
as  dramatic  monologues.  The  Medea,  but  for  two  fine 
single  lines,  is  lost ;  but  all  the  evidence  is  clear  that  Ovid 
had  no  natural  turn  for  dramatic  writing,  and  that  it  was 
merelya^c^ever  four  de  force.  In  the  idea  of  \hqf~5f eta-,? 
morphoje^tit  found  a  subject,  already  treated  in  more~~Tn"an 
-0n"e"'Alexandrian  poem,  that  gave  full  scope  for  his  narrative 
gift  and  his  fertile  ingenuity.  The  result  was  a  poem  as 
long,  and  almost  as  unflagging,  as  the  Odyssey.  _^_vast__ 
mass  of  multifarious  stories,  whose  only  connection  is  the 
casual  fact  of  their^inyplving or_alluding  to  some  transforaaa- 
tion  of  human  beings  into  stones,  trees,  plants,  beasts,  birds, 
andthe^  like,  is  , cast  into  a  continuous  narrative.  The 
adroitness  with  which  this  is  done  makes  the  poem  rank  as 
a  masterpiece  of  construction.  The  atmosphere  of  romantic 
fable  in  which  it  is  enveloped  even  gives  it  a  certain 
plausibility  of  effect  almost  amounting  to  epic  unity.  In 
the  fabulous  superhuman  element  that  appears  in  all  jhe 
stories._and  Jin  theif~natural_j5rrQiin3iH^of  jgood.  or 
mountain,  or  sea  —  always  realised  with  fresh  enjoyment  and 
vivid  torm  and  colour  —  there  is  something  which  gives  the 
same  sort  of  unity  of  effect  as  we  feel  in  reading  the 
Arabian  Nights.  ^  Itisnot  ji^r^  WQf^-;  it  is  hardly  even 
a  world  conceived  as  real;  but  it  is  a  world  so  plausible, 


IV.]  Ovid.  141 

so  directly  appealing  to  simple  instincts  and  unclouded 
senses,  above  all  so  completely  taken  for  granted,  that  the 
illusion  is,  for  the  time,  all  but  complete.  For  later  ages, 
the  Metamorphoses  became  the  great  text-book  of  classical 
mythology ;  the  legends  were  understood  as  Ovid  had  told 
them,  and  were  reproduced  (as,  for  instance,  throughout 
the  whole  of  the  painting  of  the  Renaissance)  in  the  spirit 
and  colour  of  this  Italian  story-teller. 

For  the  metre  of   the  Metamorphoses  Ovid    chose^  the 
Heroic  hexametgr^  but  used   it    in    a    strikingly  new   and 
'  original  way.     He  inakes  no  attempt,  as  later  poets  un- 
successfully did,  at  reproducing  the  richness  of  tone  and 
intricacy  of  modulation  which  it  had  in  the  hands  of  Virgil. 
Ovid's  hexameter  is  a  thing  of  his  own.     It  becomes  with 
him  almost  a  new  metre  —  light,  brilliant,  and   rapid,  but 
with  some  monotony  of  cadence,  and  without   the   deep 
swell  that  it  had,  not  in  Virgil  only,  but  in  his  predecessors. 
The  swift,  equable  movement  is  admirably  adapted  to  the 
matter  of  the  poem,  smoothing  over  the  transitions  from 
story  to  story,  and  never  allowing  a  story  to  pause  or  flag 
halfway.     Within  its  limits,  the   workmanship   is   faultless. 
The   style   neither   rises   nor   sinks   with   the   variation   oi 
subject.     One  might  almost  say  that  it  was  without  moral 
quality.     Ovid   narrates   the    treachery   of    Scylla    or    the  ""I 
incestuous   passion   of    Myrrha  with   the   same   light   and   / 
secure  touch  as  he  applies  to  the  charming  idyl  of  Baucis  / 
and  Philemon  or  the  love-tale  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  ;  his  V 
interest  is  in  what  happened,  in  the  story  for  the  story's  ( 
sake.     So,   likewise,    in    the    rhetorical    evolution    of   his  \ 
thought,   and   the   management   of   his   metre,   he    writes      j 
simply  as  the  artist,  with  the  artistic  conscience  as  his  only  -" 
rule.     The  rhetorician  is  as  strong  in  him  as  it  had  been 
in  the  Amores ;  but  it  is  under  better  control,  and  seldom 
leads  him  into  excesses  of  bad  taste,  nor  is   it   so   over- 
mastering as  not  to  allow  free  play  to  his  better  qualities, 
his  kindliness,  his  good-humour,  his  ungrudging  appreciation 


142  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

of  excellence.  In  his  evolution  of  thought  —  or  his  play  of 
fancy,  if  the  expression  be  preferred  —  he  has  an  alertness 
and  precision  akin  to  great  intellectual  qualities ;  and  it  is 
this,  perhaps,  which  has  made  him  a  favourite  with  so 
many  great  men  of  letters.  Shakespeare  himself,  in  his 
earlier  work,  alike  the  plays  and  the  poems,  writes  in  the 
Ovidian  manner,  and  often  in  what  might  be  direct  imitation 
of  Ovid ;  the  motto  from  the  Amores  prefixed  to  the  Venus 
and  Adonis  is  not  idly  chosen.  Still  more  remarkable, 
because  less  superficially  evident,  is  the  affinity  between 
Ovid  and  Milton.  At  first  sight  no  two  poets,  perhaps, 
could  seem  less  alike.  But  it  is  known  that  Ovid  was  one 
of  Milton's  favourite  poets ;  and  if  one  reads  the  Meta- 
morphoses with  an  eye  kept  on  Paradise  Lost,  the  intellectual 
resemblance,  in  the  manner  of  treatment  of  thought  and 
language,  is  abundantly  evident,  as  well  in  the  general 
structure  of  their  rhetoric  as  in  the  lapses  of  taste  and 
obstinate  puerilities  (non  ignoravit  vitia  sua  sed  amavit 
might  be  said  of  Milton  also),  which  come  from  time  to 
time  in  their  maturest  work. 

The  Metamorphoses  was  regarded  by  Ovid  himself  as 
his  masterpiece.  In  the  first  impulse  of  his  despair  at 
leaving  Rome,  he  burned  his  own  copy  of  the  still  incom- 
plete poem.  But  other  copies  were  in  existence ;  and 
though  he  writes  afterwards  as  though  it  had  been  published 
without  his  correction  and  without  his  consent,  we  may 
suspect  that  it  was  neither  without  his  knowledge  nor 
against  his  will;  when  he  speaks  of  the  manus  ultima  as 
wanting,  it  is  probably  a  mere  piece  of  harmless  affectation 
to  make  himself  seem  liker  the  author  of  the  Aeneid.  The 
case  was  different  with  the  Fasti,  the  other  long  poem 
which  he  worked  at  side  by  side  with  the  Metamorphoses. 
"The  twelve  books  of  this  work,  dealing  with  the  calendar 
of  the  twelve  months,  were  also  all  but  complete  when  he 
was  banished,  and  the  first  six,  if  not  actually  published 
had,  at  all  events,  got  into  private  circulation.  At  Tomi 


IV.]  Ovid.  143 

he  began  a  revision  of  the  poem  which,  apparently,  he  never 
completed.  The  first  half  of  the  poem,  prefaced  by  a  fresh 
dedication  to  Germanicus,  was  published,  or  republished, 
after  the  death  of  Augustus,  to  whom,  in  its  earlier  form, 
it  had  been  inscribed ;  the  second  half  never  reached  the 
public.  It  cannot  be  said  that  Latin  poetry  would  be  much 
poorer  had  the  first  six  books  been  suppressed  also.  The 
student  of  metrical  forms  would,  indeed,  have  lost  what  is 
metrically  the  most  dexterous  of  all  Latin  poems,  and  the 
archaeologist  some  curious  information  as  to  Roman 
customs ;  but,  for  other  readers,  little  would  be  missed  but 
a  few  of  the  exquisitely  told  stories,  like  that  of  Tarquin 
and  Lucretia,  cr  of  the  Rape  of  Proserpine,  which  vary  the 
somewhat  tedious  chronicle  of  astronomical  changes  and( 
national  festivals. 

The  poems  of  the  years  of  Ovid's  exile,  the  Tristia  and 
the  Letters  from  Pontus,  are  a  melancholy  record  of 
flagging  vitality  and  failing  powers.  His  adulation  of  the 
Emperor  and  the  imperial  family  passes  all  bounds;  it 
exhausts  what  would  otherwise  seem  the  inexhaustible 
copiousness  of  his  vocabulary.  The  long  supplication  to 
Augustus,  which  stands  by  itself  as  book  ii.  of  the  Tristia, 
is  the  most  elaborate  and  skilful  of  these  pieces ;  but  those 
which  may  be  read  with  the  most  pleasure  are  the  letters 
to  his  wife,  for  whom  he  had  a  deep  affection,  and  whom 
he  addresses  with  a  pathos  that  is  quite  sincere.  As  hope 
of  recall  grew  fainter,  his  work  failed  more  and  more ;  the 
incorrect  language  and  slovenly  versification  of  some  of 
the  Letters  from  Pontus  are  in  sad  contrast  to  the  Ovid  of 
ten  years  before,  and  if  he  went  on  writing  till  the  end,  it  was 
only  because  writing  had  long  been  a  second  nature  to  him. 

Of  the  extraordinary  force  and  fineness  of  Ovid's  natural 
genius,  there  never  have  been  two  opinions ;  had  he  but 
been  capable  of  controlling  it,  instead  of  indulging  it,  he 
might  have,  in  Quintilian's  opinion,  been  second  to  no 
Roman  poet.  In  his  Medea,  the  critic  adds,  he  did  show 


144  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

some  of  this  self-control ;  its  loss  is  the  more  to  be  lamented. 
But  the  easy  good-nature  of  his  own  disposition,  no  less 
than  the  whole  impulse  of  the  literary  fashion  then  pre- 
valent, was  fatal  to  the  continuous  exercise  of  such  severe 
self-education  :  and  the  man  who  was  so  keen  and  shrewd 
in  his  appreciation  of  the  follies  of  lovers  had  all  the  weak- 
ness of  a  lover  for  the  faults  of  his  own  poetry.  The 
delightful  story  of  the  three  lines  which  his  critical  friends 
urged  him  to  erase  proves,  if  proof  were  needed,  that  this 
weakness  was  not  blindness,  and  that  he  was  perfectly 
aware  of  the  vices  of  his  own  work.  The  child  of  his  time, 
he  threw  all  his  brilliant  gifts  unhesitatingly  into  the  scale 
of  new  ideas  and  new  fashions ;  his  "  modernity,"  to  use 
a  current  phrase  of  the  present  day,  is  greater  than  that  of 
any  other  ancient  author  of  anything  like  his  eminence. 

Prisca  invent  alios,  ego  me  nunc  denique  natum 
Gratulor:  haec  aetas  moribus  apta  meis  — 

this  is  his  deliberate  attitude  throughout  his  life. 

Such  a  spirit  has  more  than  once  in  the  history  of  the 
arts  marked  the  point  from  which  their  downward  course 
began.  /  do  not  sing  the  old  things,  for  the  new  are  far  better, 
the  famous  Greek  musician  Timotheus  had  said  four  centuries 
earlier,  and  the  decay  of  Greek  music  was  dated  from  that 
period.  But  to  make  any  artist,  however  eminent,  respon- 
sible for  the  decadence  of  art,  is  to  confuse  cause  with  effect ; 
and  the  note  of  ignominy  affixed  by  Augustus  to  the  Art 
of  Love  was  as  futile  as  the  action  of  the  Spartan  ephor 
when  he  cut  the  strings  away  from  the  cithara  of  Timotheus. 
The  actual  achievement  of  Ovid  was  to  perfect  and  popu- 
larise a  poetical  form  of  unusual  scope  and  flexibility;  to 
throw  a  vivid  and  lasting  life  into  the  world  of  Graeco- 
Roman  mythology ;  and,  above  all,  to  complete  the  work 
of  Cicero  and  Horace  in  fixing  a  certain  ideal  of  civilised 
manners  for  the  Latin  Empire  and  for  modern  Europe. 
He  was  not  a  poet  of  the  first  order ;  yet  few  poets  of  the 
first  order  have  done  a  work  of  such  wide  importance. 


V. 

LIVY. 

THE  Ciceronian  age  represents  on  the  whole  the  culmina- 
tion of  Latin  prose,  as  the  Augustan  does  the  culmination 
of  Latin  poetry.  In  the  former  field,  the  purity  of  the 
language  as  it  had  been  used  by  Caesar  and  Cicero  could 
hardly  be  retained  in  a  period  of  more  diffused  culture  ;  and 
the  influence  of  the  schools  of  rhetoric,  themselves  based 
on  inferior  Greek  models,  became  more  and  more  marked. 
Poetry,  too,  was  for  the  time  more  important  than  prose, 
and  one  result  was  that  prose  became  infected  with  certain 
qualities  of  poetical  style.  The  reign  of  Augustus  includes 
only  one  prose  writer  of  the  first  rank,  the  historian  Titus 
Livius. 

Though  not  living  like  Virgil  or  Horace  in  the  immediate 
circle  of  Augustus  and  under  direct  court  patronage,  Livy 
was  in  friendly  relations  with  the  Emperor  and  his  family, 
and  accepted  the  new  rule  with  cordiality,  if  without  much 
enthusiasm.  Of  his  life,  which  seems  to  have  been  wholly 
spent  in  literary  pursuits,  little  is  known.  He  was  born  at 
Padua  in  the  year  of  Julius  Caesar's  first  consulship,  and 
had  survived  Augustus  by  three  years  when  he  died  at  the 
age  of  seventy-five.  In  earlier  life  he  wrote  some  philo- 
sophical dialogues  and  treatises  on  rhetoric  which  have  not 
been  preserved.  An  allusion  in  the  first  book  of  his  history 
shows  that  it  was  written,  or  at  all  events  published,  after 
the  first  and  before  the  second  closing  of  the  temple  of 
L  145 


146  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

Janus  by  Augustus,  in  the  years  29  and  25  B.C.  For  forty 
years  thereafter  he  continued  this  colossal  task,  which,  like 
the  Decline  and  Fall,  was  published  in  parts  from  time  to 
time.  He  lived  to  bring  it  down  as  far  as  the  death  of 
Drusus,  the  younger  son  of  the  Empress  Livia,  in  the  year 
9  B.C.  The  division  into  books,  of  which  there  were  one 
hundred  and  forty-two  in  the  whole  work,  is  his  own;  these 
again  were  arranged  in  volumina,  or  sections  issued  as 
separate  volumes,  and  containing  a  varying  number  of 
books.  The  division  of  the  work  into  decads  was  made 
by  copyists  at  a  much  later  period,  and  was  no  part  of  the 
author's  own  plan.  Only  one-fourth  of  the  whole  history 
has  survived  the  Middle  Ages.  This  consists  of  the  first, 
the  third,  the  fourth,  and  half  of  the  fifth  decad,  or  books 
i.-x.  and  xxi.-xlv.  of  the  work ;  of  the  rest  we  only  possess 
brief  tables  of  contents,  drawn  up  in  the  fourth  century,  not 
from  the  original  work  but  from  an  abridgment,  itself  now 
lost,  which  was  then  in  use.  The  scale  of  the  history  is 
very  different  in  the  two  surviving  portions.  The  first 
decad  carries  it  from  the  foundation  of  the  city  through 
the  Regal  and  early  Republican  periods  down  to  the  third 
Samnite  war,  a  period  of  four  centuries  and  a  half.  The 
twenty-five  extant  books  of  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth 
decads  cover  a  period  of  fifty  years,  from  the  beginning 
of  the  second  Punic  to  the  conclusion  of  the  third  Mace- 
donian war.  This  half  century,  it  is  true,  was  second  in 
importance  to  none  in  Roman  history.  But  the  scale 
of  the  work  had  a  constant  tendency  to  expand  as  it 
approached  more  modern  times,  and  more  abundant  docu- 
ments ;  and  when  he  reached  his  own  time,  nearly  a  book 
was  occupied  with  the  events  of  each  year. 

Founded  as  it  was,  at  least  for  the  earlier  periods,  upon 
the  works  of  preceding  annalists,  the  history  of  Livy  adopted 
from  them  the  arrangement  by  years  marked  by  successive 
consulates,  which  was  familiar  to  all  his  readers.  He  even 
speaks  of  his  own  work  as  annales,  though  its  formal  title 


V.]  Livy,  147 

seems  to  have  been  Historiae  (or  Libri  Historiarum)  ab 
Urbe  Condita.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he 
intended  to  conclude  it  at  any  fixed  point.  In  a  preface 
to  one  of  the  later  volumes,  he  observed  with  justifiable 
pride  that  he  had  already  satisfied  the  desire  of  fame,  and 
only  went  on  writing  because  the  task  of  composition  had 
become  a  fixed  habit,  which  he  could  not  discontinue  with- 
out uneasiness.  His  fame  even  in  his  lifetime  was  un- 
bounded. He  seems  to  have  made  no  enemies.  The 
acrid  criticism  of  Asinius  Pollio,  a  purist  by  profession,  on 
certain  provincialities  of  his  style,  was  an  insignificant 
exception  to  the  general  chorus  of  praise.  In  treading 
the  delicate  ground  of  the  Civil  wars  his  candour  towards 
the  Republican  party  led  Augustus  to  tax  him  half  jestingly 
as  a  Pompeian ;  yet  Livy  lost  no  favour  either  with  him 
or  with  his  more  jealous  successor.  The  younger  Pliny 
relates  how  a  citizen  of  Cadiz  was  so  fired  by  his  fame  that 
he  travelled  the  whole  way  •  to  Rome  merely  to  see  him, 
and  as  soon  as  he  had  seen  him  returned  home,  as  though 
Rome  had  no  other  spectacles  to  offer. 

Roman  history  had  hitherto  been  divided  between  the 
annalists  and  the  writers  of  personal  and  contemporary 
memoirs.  Sallust  was  almost  the  only  example  of  the 
definite  historical  treatment  of  a  single  epoch  or  episode  of 
the  past.  As  a  rule  each  annalist  set  himself  the  same 
task,  of  compiling,  from  the  work  of  his  predecessors,  and 
such  additional  information  as  he  found  accessible  to  him, 
a  general  history  of  the  Roman  people  from  its  beginnings, 
carried  down  as  far  towards  his  own  day  as  he  found  time 
or  patience  to  continue  it.  Each  successive  annalist  tried 
to  improve  upon  previous  writers,  either  in  elegance  of  style 
or  in  copiousness  of  matter,  and  so  far  as  he  succeeded  in 
the  double  task  his  work  replaced  those  already  written. 
It  was  not  considered  unfair  to  transcribe  whole  passages 
from  former  annalists,  or  even  to  copy  their  works  with 
additions  and  improvements,  and  bring  them  out  as  new 


148  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

and  original  histories.  The  idea  of  literary  property  seems, 
in  truth,  to  be  very  much  a  creation  of  positive  law.  When 
no  copyright  existed,  and  when  the  circulation  of  any  book 
was  confined  within  very  small  limits  by  the  cost  and  labour 
of  transcription,  the  vaguest  ideas  prevailed,  not  at  Rome 
alone,  on  what  we  should  now  regard  as  the  elementary 
morality  of  plagiarism.  Virgil  himself  transferred  whole 
lines  and  passages,  not  merely  from  earlier,  but  even  from 
contemporary  poets ;  and  in  prose  writing,  one  annalist 
cut  up  and  reshaped  the  work  of  another  with  as  little 
hesitation  as  a  mediaeval  romance-writer. 

In  this  matter  Livy  allowed  himself  full  liberty ;  and  his 
work  absorbed,  and  in  a  great  measure  blotted  out,  those  of 
his  predecessors.  In  his  general  preface  he  speaks  of  the 
two  motives  which  animate  new  historians,  as  the  hope  that 
they  will  throw  further  light  on  events,  or  the  belief  that 
their  own  art  will  excel  that  of  a  ruder  age.  The  former 
he  hardly  professes  to  do,  at  least  as  regards  times  anterior 
to  his  own ;  his  hope  is  that  by  his  pen  the  great  story  of 
the  Republic  will  be  told  more  impressively,  more  vividly, 
in  a  manner  more  stimulating  to  the  reader  and  more 
worthy  of  the  subject  than  had  hitherto  been  done.  This 
purpose  at  least  he  amply  and  nobly  carried  out ;  nor  can 
it  be  said  to  be  a  low  ideal  of  the  function  of  history. 

So  far,  however,  as  the  office  of  the  historian  is  to  in- 
vestigate facts,  to  get  at  the  exact  truth  of  what  physically 
happened,  or  to  appreciate  the  varying  degrees  of  proba- 
bility with  which  that  truth  can  be  attained,  Livy  falls  far 
short  of  any  respectable  ideal.  His  romantic  temper  and 
the  ethical  bent  of  his  mind  alike  indisposed  him  to  set 
any  very  great  value  on  facts  as  such.  His  history  bears 
little  trace  of  any  independent  investigation.  Sources  for 
history  lay  round  him  in  immense  profusion.  The  enormous 
collections  made  by  Varro  in  every  field  of  antiquarian  re- 
search were  at  his  hand,  but  he  does  not  seem  to  have 
used  them,  still  less  to  have  undertaken  any  similar  laboui 


V.]  Livy.  149 

on  his  own  account.  While  he  never  wilfully  distorts  the 
truth,  he  takes  comparatively  little  pains  to  disengage  it 
from  fables  and  inaccuracies.  In  his  account  of  a  battle 
in  Greece  he  finds  that  Valerius  Antias  puts  the  number  of 
the  enemy  killed  as  inside  ten  thousand,  while  Claudius 
Quadrigarius  says  forty  thousand.  The  discrepancy  does 
not  ruffle  him,  nor  even  seem  to  him  very  important ;  he 
contents  himself  with  an  expression  of  mild  surprise  that 
Valerius  for  once  allows  himself  to  be  outstripped  in  exag- 
gerating numbers.  Yet  where  Valerius  is  his  only  authority 
or  is  not  contradicted  by  others,  he  accepts  his  statements, 
figures  and  all,  without  uneasiness.  This  instance  is  typical 
of  his  method  as  a  critical — or  rather  an  uncritical — historian. 
When  his  authorities  do  not  disagree,  he  accepts  what  they 
say  without  much  question.  When  they  do  disagree,  he 
has  several  courses  open  to  him,  and  takes  one  or  another 
according  to  his  fancy  at  the  moment.  Sometimes  he 
counts  heads  and  follows  the  majority  of  his  authors ; 
sometimes  he  adopts  the  account  of  the  earliest ;  often  he 
tries  to  combine  or  mediate  between  discordant  stories; 
when  this  is  not  easy,  he  chooses  the  account  which  is 
most  superficially  probable  or  most  dramatically  impressive. 
He  even  bases  a  choice  on  the  ground  that  the  story  he 
adopts  shows  Roman  statesmanship  or  virtue  in  a  more 
favourable  light,  though  he  finds  some  of  the  inventions  of 
Roman  vanity  too  much  for  him  to  swallow.  Throughout 
he  tends  to  let  his  own  preferences  decide  whether  or  not 
a  story  is  true.  In  rebus  tarn  antiquis  si  quae  similia  veri 
sint  pro  verts  accipiantur  is  the  easy  canon  which  he  lays 
down  for  early  and  uncertain  events.  Even  when  original 
documents  of  great  value  were  extant,  he  refrains  from 
citing  them  if  they  do  not  satisfy  his  taste.  During  the 
second  Punic  war  a  hymn  to  Juno  had  been  written  by 
Livius  Andronicus  for  a  propitiatory  festival.  It  was  one 
of  the  most  celebrated  documents  of  early  Latin ;  but  he 
refuses  to  insert  it,  on  the  ground  that  to  the  taste  of  his 


150  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

own  day  it  seemed  rude  and  harsh.  Yet  as  a  historian, 
and  not  a  collector  of  materials  for  history,  he  may  plead 
the  privilege  of  the  artist.  The  modern  compromise  by 
which  documents  are  cited  in  notes  without  being  inserted 
in  the  text  of  histories  had  not  then  been  invented ;  and 
notes,  even  when  as  in  the  case  of  Gibbon's  they  have  a 
substantive  value  as  literature,  are  an  adjunct  to  the  history 
itself,  rather  than  any  essential  part  of  it.  A  more  serious 
charge  is,  that  when  he  had  trustworthy  authorities  to  follow, 
he  did  not  appreciate  their  value.  In  his  account  of  the 
Macedonian  wars,  he  often  follows  Polybius  all  but  word 
for  word,  but  without  apparently  realising  the  Greek 
historian's  admirable  accuracy  and  judgment.  Such  ap- 
preciation only  comes  of  knowledge ;  and  Livy  lacked  the 
vast  learning  and  the  keen  critical  insight  of  Gibbon,  to 
whom  in  many  respects  he  has  a  strong  affinity.  His 
imperfect  knowledge  of  the  military  art  and  of  Roman  law 
often  confuses  his  narrative  of  campaigns  and  constitutional 
struggles,  and  gives  too  much  reason  to  the  charge  of 
negligence  brought  against  him  by  that  clever  and  impudent 
critic,  the  Emperor  Caligula. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  all  his  inaccuracies  of  detail,  and  in  spite 
of  the  graver  defect  of  insufficient  historical  perspective, 
which  makes  him  colour  the  whole  political  development 
of  the  Roman  state  with  the  ideas  of  his  own  time,  the 
history  of  Rome  as  narrated  by  Livy  is  essentially  true 
and  vital,  because  based  on  a  large  insight  into  the  perma- 
nent qualities  of  human  nature.  The  spirit  in  which  he 
writes  history  is  well  illustrated  by  the  speeches.  These, 
in  a  way,  set  the  tone  of  the  whole  work.  He  does  not 
affect  in  them  to  reproduce  the  substance  of  words  actually 
spoken,  or  even  to  imitate  the  tone  of  the  time  in  which 
the  speech  is  laid.  He  uses  them  as  a  vivid  and  dramatic 
method  of  portraying  character  and  motive.  The  method, 
in  its  brilliance  and  its  truth  to  permanent  facts,  is  like 
that  of  Shakespeare's  Coriolanus.  Such  truth,  according  to 


V.]  Livy.  151 

the  celebrated  aphorism  in  Aristotle's  Poetics,  is  the  truth  of 
poetry  rather  than  of  history  :  and  the  history  of  Livy,  in 
this,  as  in  his  opulent  and  coloured  diction,  has  some  affinity 
to  poetry.  Yet,  when  such  insight  into  motive  and  such 
vivid  creative  imagination  are  based  on  really  large  knowl- 
edge and  perfect  sincerity,  a  higher  historical  truth  may 
be  reached  than  by  the  most  laborious  accumulation  of 
documents  and  sifting  of  evidence. 

Livy's  humane  and  romantic  temper  prevented  him  from 
being  a  political  partisan,  even  if  political  partisanship  had 
been  consistent  with  the  view  he  took  of  his  own  art. 
In  common  with  most  educated  Romans  of  his  time,  he 
idealised  the  earlier  Republic,  and  spoke  of  his  own  age 
as  fatally  degenerate.  But  this  is  a  tendency  common  to 
writers  of  all  periods.  He  frequently  pauses  to  deplore  the 
loss  of  the  ancient  qualities  by  which  Rome  had  grown 
great  —  simplicity,  equity,  piety,  orderliness.  In  his  remark- 
able preface  he  speaks  of  himself  as  turning  to  historical 
study  in  order  to  withdraw  his  mind  from  the  evils  of  his 
own  age,  and  the  spectacle  of  an  empire  tottering  to  the 
fall  under  the  weight  of  its  own  greatness  and  the  vices 
of  its  citizens.  "  Into  no  State,"  he  continues,  "  were  greed 
and  luxury  so  long  in  entering ;  in  these  late  days  avarice 
has  grown  with  wealth,  and  the  frantic  pursuit  of  pleasure 
leads  fast  towards  a  collapse  of  the  whole  social  fabric ;  in 
our  ever-accelerating  downward  course  we  have  already 
reached  a  point  where  our  vices  and  their  remedies  are 
alike  intolerable."  But  his  idealisation  of  earlier  ages  was 
that  of  the  romantic  student  rather  than  the  reactionary 
politician.  He  is  always  on  the  side  of  order,  moderation, 
conciliation ;  there  was  nothing  politically  dangerous  to 
the  imperial  government  in  his  mild  republicanism.  He 
shrinks  instinctively  from  violence  wherever  he  meets  it, 
whether  on  the  side  of  the  populace  or  of  the  governing 
class ;  he  cannot  conceive  why  people  should  not  be 
reasonable,  and  live  in  peace  under  a  moderate  and  settled 


152  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

government.  This  was  the  temper  which  was  welcome  at 
court,  even  in  men  of  Pompeian  sympathies. 

So,  too,  Livy's  attitude  towards  the  established  religion 
and  towards  the  beliefs  of  former  times  has  the  same  senti- 
mental tinge.  The  moral  reform  attempted  by  Augustus 
had  gone  hand  in  hand  with  an  elaborate  revival  and 
amplification  of  religious  ceremony.  Outward  conformity 
at  least  was  required  of  all  citizens.  Expcdit  esse  deos,  et 
ut  expedit  esse  putemus ;  "  the  existence  of  the  gods  is  a 
matter  of  public  policy,  and  we  must  believe  it  accordingly," 
Ovid  had  said,  in  the  most  daring  and  cynical  of  his  poems. 
The  old  associations,  the  antiquarian  charm,  that  lingered 
round  this  faded  ancestral  belief,  appealed  strongly  to  the 
romantic  patriotism  of  the  historian.  His  own  religion  was 
a  sort  of  mild  fatalism ;  he  pauses  now  and  then  to  draw 
rather  commonplace  reflections  on  the  blindness  of  men 
destined  to  misfortune,  or  the  helplessness  of  human  wisdom 
and  foresight  against  destiny.  But  at  the  same  time  he 
gravely  chronicles  miracles  and  portents,  not  so  much  from 
any  belief  in  their  truth  as  because  they  are  part  of  the 
story.  The  fact  that  they  had  ceased  to  be  regarded 
seriously  in  his  own  time,  and  were  accordingly  in  a  great 
measure  ceasing  to  happen,  he  laments  as  one  among  many 
declensions  from  older  and  purer  fashions. 

As  a  master  of  style,  Livy  is  supreme  among  historians. 
He  marks  the  highest  point  which  the  enlarged  and  enriched 
prose  of  the  Augustan  age  reached  just  before  it  began 
to  fall  into  decadence.  It  is  no  longer  the  famous  urbanus 
sermo  of  the  later  Republic,  the  pure  and  somewhat  austere 
language  of  a  governing  class.  The  influence  of  Virgil  is 
already  traceable  in  Livy,  in  actual  phrases  whose  use  had 
hitherto  been  confined  to  poetry,  and  also  in  a  certain 
warmth  of  colouring  unknown  to  earlier  prose.  To  Augus- 
tan purists  this  relaxation  of  the  language  seemed  provincial 
and  unworthy  of  the  severe  tradition  of  the  best  Latin ;  and 
it  was  this  probably,  rather  than  any  definite  novelties  in 


V.]  Livy.  153 

grammar  or  vocabulary,  that  made  Asinius  Pollio  accuse 
Livy  of  "  Patavinity."  But  in  the  hands  of  Livy  the  new 
style,  by  its  increased  volume  and  flexibility,  is  as  admirably 
suited  to  a  work  of  great  length  and  scope  as  the  older 
had  been  for  the  purposes  of  Caesar  or  Sallust.  It  is  drawn, 
so  to  speak,  with  a  larger  pattern ;  and  the  added  richness 
of  tone  enables  him  to  advance  without  flagging  through 
the  long  and  intricate  narrative  where  a  simpler  diction 
must  necessarily  have  grown  monotonous,  as  one  more 
florid  would  be  cloying.  In  the  earlier  books  we  seem  to 
find  the  manner  still  a  little  uncertain  and  tentative,  and 
a  little  trammelled  by  the  traditional  manner  of  the  older 
annalists ;  as  he  proceeds  in  his  work  he  falls  into  his 
stride,  and  advances  with  a  movement  as  certain  as  that 
of  Gibbon,  and  claimed  by  Roman  critics  as  comparable 
in  ease  and  grace  to  that  of  Herodotus.  The  periodic 
structure  of  Latin  prose  which  had  been  developed  by 
Cicero  is  carried  by  him  to  an  even  greater  complexity, 
and  used  with  a  greater  daring  and  freedom ;  a  sort  of 
fine  carelessness  in  detail  enhancing  the  large  and  con- 
tinuous excellence  of  his  broad  effect.  Even  where  he 
copies  Polybius  most  closely  he  invariably  puts  life  and 
grace  into  his  cumbrous  Greek.  For  the  facts  of  the  war 
with  Hannibal  we  can  rely  more  safely  on  the  latter ;  but 
it  is  in  the  picture  of  Livy  that  we  see  it  live  before  us. 
His  imagination  never  fails  to  kindle  at  great  actions ;  it 
is  he,  more  than  any  other  author,  who  has  impressed 
the  great  soldiers  and  statesmen  of  the  Republic  on  the 
imagination  of  the  world. 

Quin  Decios  Drusosque  procul,  saevumque  sccuri 
Aspice  Torquatum,  et  referentem  signa  Camillum  .  .  . 
Quis  te,  magnc  Cato,  taciturn,  aut  te,  Cosse,  relinquatt 
Quis  Gracchi  genus,  aut  geminos,  duofulmina  belli, 
Scipiadas,  cladem  Libyae,  parvoque  potentem 
Fabririum,  vel  te  sulco,  Serrane,  serentem  ?  — 


154  Latin  Literature.  [II- 

his  whole  work  is  a  splendid  expansion  of  that  vision  of 
Rome  which  passes  before  the  eyes  of  Aeneas  in  the 
Fortunate  Fields  of  the  underworld.  In  the  description  of 
great  events,  no  less  than  of  great  characters  and  actions, 
he  rises  and  kindles  with  his  subject.  His  eye  for  dramatic 
effect  is  extraordinary.  The  picture  of  the  siege  and 
storming  of  Saguntum,  with  which  he  opens  the  stately 
narrative  of  the  war  between  Rome  and  Hannibal,  is  an 
instance  of  his  instinctive  skill ;  together  with  the  masterly 
sketch  of  the  character  of  Hannibal  and  the  description 
of  the  scene  in  the  Carthaginian  senate-house  at  the  recep- 
tion of  the  Roman  ambassadors,  it  forms  a  complete  prelude 
to  the  whole  drama  of  the  war.  His  great  battle-pieces, 
too,  in  spite  of  his  imperfect  mastery  of  military  science, 
are  admirable  as  works  of  art.  Among  others  may  be 
specially  instanced,  as  masterpieces  of  execution,  the  account 
of  the  victory  over  Antiochus  at  Magnesia  in  the  thirty- 
seventh  book,  and,  still  more-  that  in  the  forty-fourth  of 
the  fiercely  contested  battle  of  Pydna,  the  desperate  heroism 
of  the  Pelignian  cohort,  and  the  final  and  terrible  destruction 
of  the  Macedonian  phalanx. 

Yet,  with  all  his  admiration  for  great  men  and  deeds, 
what  most  of  all  kindles  Livy's  imagination  and  sustains 
his  enthusiasm  is  a  subject  larger,  and  to  him  hardly  more 
abstract,  the  Roman  Commonwealth  itself,  almost  per- 
sonified as  a  continuous  living  force.  This  is  almost  the 
only  matter  in  which  patriotism  leads  him  to  marked 
partiality.  The  epithet  "  Roman  "  signifies  to  him  all  that 
is  high  and  noble.  That  Rome  can  do  no  wrong  is  a  sort 
of  article  of  faith  with  him,  and  he  has  always  a  tendency 
to  do  less  than  justice  to  her  enemies.  The  two  qualities 
of  eloquence  and  candour  are  ustly  ascribed  to  him  by 
Tacitus,  but  from  the  latter  some  deduction  must  be  made 
when  he  is  dealing  with  foreign  relations  and  external 
diplomacy.  Without  any  intention  to  falsify  history,  he  is 
sometimes  completely  carried  away  by  his  romantic  enthu- 
siasm for  Roman  statesmanship. 


V.]  Livy.  155 

This  canonisation  of  Rome  is  Livy's  largest  and  most 
abiding  achievement.  The  elder  Seneca,  one  of  his  ablest 
literary  contemporaries,  observes,  in  a  fine  passage,  that 
when  historians  reach  in  their  narrative  the  death  of  some 
great  man,  they  give  a  summing-up  of  his  whole  life  as 
though  it  were  an  eulogy  pronounced  over  his  grave.  Livy, 
he  adds,  the  most  candid  of  all  historians  in  his  apprecia- 
tion of  genius,  does  this  with  unusual  grace  and  sympathy. 
The  remark  may  bear  a  wider  scope  ;  for  the  whole  of  his 
work  is  animated  by  a  similar  spirit  towards  the  idealised 
Commonwealth,  to  the  story  of  whose  life  he  devoted  his 
splendid  literary  gifts.  As  the  title  of  Gesta  Populi  Romani 
was  given  to  the  Aeneid  on  its  appearance,  so  the  Historiae 
ab  Urbe  Condita  might  be  called,  with  no  less  truth,  a 
funeral  eulogy  —  consummatio  totius  vitae  et  quasi  funebris 
laudatio  —  delivered,  by  the  most  loving  and  most  eloquent 
of  her  children,  over  the  grave  of  the  great  Republic. 


VI. 

THE  LESSER  AUGUSTANS. 

THE  impulse  given  to  Latin  literature  by  the  great  poets 
and  prose  writers  of  the  first  century  before  Christ  ebbed 
slowly  away.  The  end  of  the  so-called  Golden  Age  may 
be  conveniently  fixed  in  the  year  which  saw  the  death  of 
Livy  and  Ovid ;  but  the  smaller  literature  of  the  period 
suffered  no  violent  breach  of  continuity,  and  one  can  hardly 
name  any  definite  date  at  which  the  Silver  Age  begins. 
Until  the  appearance  of  a  new  school  of  writers  in  the  reign 
of  Nero,  the  history  of  Roman  literature  is  a  continuation 
of  the  Augustan  tradition.  But  it  is  continued  by  feeble 
hands,  and  dwindles  away  more  and  more  under  several 
unfavourable  influences.  Among  these  influences  may  be 
specially  noted  the  growing  despotism  of  the  Empire,  which 
had  already  become  grave  in  the  later  years  of  Augustus, 
and  under  his  successors  reached  a.  point  which  made  free 
writing,  like  free  speech,  impossible ;  the  perpetually  in- 
creasing importance  of  the  schools  of  declamation,  which 
forced  a  fashion  of  overstrained  and  unnatural  rhetoric  on 
both  prose  and  verse ;  and  the  paralysing  effect  of  the  great 
Augustan  writers  themselves,  which  led  poetry  at  all  events 
to  lose  itself  in  imitations  of  imitations  within  an  arbitrary 
and  rigid  limit  of  subjects  and  methods. 

In  mere  amount  of  production,  however,  literature  re- 
mained active  during  the  first  half-century  of  the  Christian  era. 
That  far  the  greater  part  of  it  has  perished  is  probably  a 

156 


VI.]  Minor  Augustan  Poetry.  157 

matter  for  congratulation  rather  than  regret ;  even  of  what 
survives  there  is  a  good  deal  that  we  could  well  do  without, 
and  such  of  it  as  is  valuable  is  so  rather  from  incidental 
than  essential  reasons.  Scribimus  indocti  doctique  poemata 
passim,  Horace  had  written  in  half-humorous  bitterness ; 
the  crowd  of  names  that  flit  like  autumn  leaves  through  the 
pages  of  Ovid  represent  probably  but  a  small  part  of  the 
immense  production.  Among  the  works  of  Ovid  himself 
were  included  at  various  times  poems  by  other  contemporary 
hands  —  some,  like  the  Consolatio  ad  Liviam,  and  the  elegy 
on  the  Nut-tree,  without  any  author's  name  ;  others  of  known 
authorship,  like  the  continuation  by  Sabinus  of  Ovid's 
Heroides,  in  the  form  of  replies  addressed  to  them  by  their 
lovers.  Heroic  poetry,  too,  both  on  mythological  and 
historical  subjects,  continued  to  be  largely  written ;  but  few 
of  the  writers  are  more  than  names.  Cornelius  Severus, 
author  of  an  epic  on  the  civil  wars,  gave  in  his  earlier  work 
promise  of  great  excellence,  which  was  but  poorly  fulfilled. 
The  fine  and  stately  passage  on  the  death  of  Cicero,  quoted 
by  Seneca,  fully  reaches  the  higher  level  of  post-Virgilian 
style.  Two  other  poets  of  considerable  note  at  the  time, 
but  soon  forgotten  after  their  death,  were  Albinovanus  Pedo 
and  Rabirius.  The  former,  besides  a  Theseid,  wrote  a 
narrative  and  descriptive  poem  in  the  epic  manner,  on  the 
northern  campaigns  of  Germanicus ;  the  latter  was  the 
author  of  an  epic  on  the  conflict  with  Antonius,  which  was 
kept  alive  for  a  short  time  by  court  favour;  the  stupid 
and  amiable  aide-de-camp  of  Tiberius,  Velleius  Paterculus, 
no  doubt  repeating  what  he  heard  in  official  circles,  speaks 
of  him  and  Virgil  as  the  two  most  eminent  poets  of  the  age  ! 
Tiberius  himself,  though  he  chiefly  wrote  in  Greek,  occa- 
sionally turned  off  a  copy  of  Latin  verses ;  and  his  nephew 
Germanicus,  a  man  of  much  learning  and  culture,  composed 
a  Latin  version  of  the  famous  Phaenomena  of  Aratus,  which 
shows  uncommon  skill  and  talent.  Another,  and  a  more 
important  work  of  the  same  type,  but  with  more  original 


158  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

power,  and  less  a  mere  adaptation  of  Greek  originals,  is 
the  Asironomica,  ascribed  on  doubtful  manuscript  evidence 
to  an  otherwise  unknown  Gaius  or  Marcus  Manilius.  This 
poem,  from  the  allusions  in  it  to  the  destruction  of  the  three 
legions  under  Varus,  and  the  retirement  of  Tiberius  in 
Rhodes,  must  have  been  begun  in  the  later  years  of 
Augustus,  though  probably  not  completed  till  after  his 
death.  As  extant  it  consists  of  five  books,  the  last  being 
incomplete ;  the  full  plan  seems  to  have  included  a  sixth, 
and  would  have  extended  the  work  to  about  five  thousand 
lines,  or  two-thirds  of  the  length  of  the  De  Rerum  Natura. 
Next  to  the  poem  of  Lucretius  it  is,  therefore,  much  the 
largest  in  bulk  of  extant  Latin  didactic  poems.  The 
oblivion  into  which  it  has  fallen  is,  perhaps,  a  little  hard  if 
one  considers  how  much  Latin  poetry  of  no  greater  merit 
continues  to  have  a  certain  reputation,  and  even  now  and 
then  to  be  read.  The  author  is  not  a  great  poet ;  but  he 
is  a  writer  of  real  power  both  in  thought  and  style.  The 
versification  of  his  Astronomica  shows  a  high  mastery  of 
technique.  The  matter  is  often  prosaically  handled,  and 
often  seeks  relief  from  prosaic  handling  in  ill-judged  flights 
of  rhetoric ;  but  throughout  we  feel  a  strong  and  original 
mind,  with  a  large  power  over  lucid  and  forcible  expression. 
In  the  prologue  to  the  third  book  he  rejects  for  himself  the 
common  material  for  hexameter  poems,  subjects  from  the 
Greek  heroic  cycle,  or  from  Roman  history.  His  total 
want  of  narrative  gift,  as  shown  by  the  languor  and  flat- 
ness of  the  elaborate  episode  in  which  he  attempts  to 
tell  the  story  of  Perseus  and  Andromeda,  would  have  been 
sufficient  reason  for  this  decision ;  but  he  justifies  it,  in 
lines  of  much  grace  and  feeling,  as  due  to  his  desire  to  take 
a  line  of  his  own,  and  make  a  fresh  if  a  small  conquest  for 
Latin  poetry. 

Omnis  ad  accessus  Heliconis  semita  trita  est, 
Et  iam  confusi  manant  de  fontibus  amnes 


VI.]  Manilius.  1 59 

Nee  capiunt  haustum,  turbamque  ad  nota  ruentcm  : 
Integra  quaeramus  rorantes  prata  per  herbas 
Undamque  occultis  meditantem  murmur  in  antris. 

In  a  passage  of  nobler  and  more  sincere  feeling,  he  breaks 
off  his  catalogue  of  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac  to  vindicate 
the  arduous  study  of  abstract  science  — 

"  Multtim  "  inquis  "  tenuemque  tubes  me  ferre  laborem 

Cernere  cum  facili  lucem  ratione  viderer" 

Quod  quaeris,  Deus  est.     Coneris  scandere  caelum 

Fataque  fatali  genitus  cognoscere  lege 

Et  transire  tuum  pectus,  mundoque  potiri : 

Pro  pretio  labor  est,  nee  sunt  imtmmia  fan/a. 

Wherever  one  found  this  language  used,  in  prose  or  verse, 
it  would  be  memorable.  The  thought  is  not  a  mere  text 
of  the  schools ;  it  is  strongly  and  finely  conceived,  and  put 
in  a  form  that  anticipates  the  ardent  and  lofty  manner  of 
Lucan,  without  his  perpetual  overstrain  of  expression. 
Other  passages,  showing  the  same  mental  force,  occur  in 
the  Astronomica  :  one  might  instance  the  fine  passage  on  the 
power  of  the  human  eye  to  take  in,  within  its  tiny  compass, 
the  whole  immensity  of  the  heavens ;  or  another,  suggested 
by  the  mention  of  the  constellation  Argo,  on  the  influence 
of  sea-power  on  history,  where  the  inevitable  and  well- 
worn  instances  of  Salamis  and  Actium  receive  a  fresh 
life  from  the  citation  of  the  destruction  of  the  Athenian 
fleet  in  the  bay  of  Syracuse,  and  the  great  naval  battles  of 
the  first  Punic  war.  Or  again,  the  lines  with  which  he  opens 
the  fourth  book,  weakened  as  their  effect  is  by  what  follows 
them,  a  tedious  enumeration  of  events  showing  the  power 
of  destiny  over  human  fortunes,  are  worthy  of  a  great 
poet :  — 

Quid  tarn  solHcitis  vitatn  consumimus  annis, 
Torquemurque  metu  caecaque  cupidine  rerum  ? 


160  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

Aeternisque  senes  curis,  dum  quacrimus  aevum 
Perdimus,  ct  nullo  votorum  fine  beati 
Victuros  agimus  semper,  nee  vivimus  unquam  t 

These  passages  have  been  cited  from  the  Astronomica 
because,  to  all  but  a  few  professional  students  of  Latin,  the 
poem  is  practically  unknown.  The  only  other  poet  who 
survives  from  the  reign  of  Tiberius  is  in  a  very  different 
position,  being  so  well  known  and  so  slight  in  literary 
quality  as  to  make  any  quotations  superfluous.  Phaedrus, 
a  Thracian  freedman  belonging  to  the  household  of 
Augustus,  published  at  this  time  the  well-known  collection 
of  Fables  which,  like  the  lyrics  of  the  pseudo-Anacreon, 
have  obtained  from  their  use  as  a  school-book  a  circulation 
much  out  of  proportion  to  their  merit.  Their  chief  interest 
is  as  the  last  survival  of  the  urbanus  sermo  in  Latin  poetry. 
They  are  written  in  iambic  senarii,  in  the  fluent  and  studi- 
ously simple  Latin  of  an  earlier  period,  not  without  occa- 
sional vulgarisms,  but  with  a  total  absence  of  the  turgid 
rhetoric  which  was  coming  into  fashion.  The  Fables  are 
the  last  utterance  made  by  the  speech  of  Terence :  it  is 
singular  that  this  intimately  Roman  style  should  have 
begun  and  ended  with  two  authors  of  servile  birth  and 
foreign  blood.  But  the  patronage  of  literature  was  now 
passing  out  of  the  hands  of  statesmen.  Terence  had  moved 
in  the  circle  of  the  younger  Scipio ;  one  book  of  the  Fables 
of  Phaedrus  is  dedicated  to  Eutychus,  the  famous  chariot- 
driver  of  the  Greens  in  the  reign  of  Caligula.  It  was  not 
long  before  Phaedrus  was  in  use  as  a  school-book ;  but  his 
volume  was  apparently  regarded  as  hardly  coming  within 
the  province  of  serious  literature.  It  is  ignored  by  Seneca 
and  not  mentioned  by  Quintilian.  But  we  must  remind 
ourselves  that  the  most  celebrated  works,  whether  in  prose 
or  verse,  do  not  of  necessity  have  the  widest  circulation  or 
the  largest  influence.  Among  the  poems  produced  in  the 
first  ten  years  of  this  century  the  Original  Poems  of  Jane 


VI.]  Phaedrus.  161 

and  Ann  Taylor  are  hardly  if  at  all  mentioned  in  handbooks 
of  English  literature ;  but  to  thousands  of  readers  they 
were  more  familiar  than  the  contemporary  poems  of 
Wordsworth  or  Coleridge  or  even  of  Scott.  In  their 
terse  and  pure  English,  the  language  which  is  trans- 
mitted from  one  generation  to  another  through  the  con- 
tinuous tradition  of  the  nursery,  they  may  remind  us  of  the 
Fables  of  Phaedrus. 

The  collection  consists  of  nearly  a  hundred  pieces.  Of 
these  three-fourths  are  fables  proper;  being  not  so  much 
translations  from  the  Greek  of  Aesop  as  versions  of  the 
traditional  stories,  written  and  unwritten,  which  were  the 
common  inheritance  of  the  Aryan  peoples.  Mixed  up  with 
these  are  a  number  of  stories  which  are  not  strictly  fables  ; 
five  of  them  are  about  Aesop  himself,  and  there  are  also 
stories  told  of  Simonides,  Socrates,  and  Menander.  Two 
are  from  the  history  of  his  own  time,  one  relating  a  grim 
jest  of  the  Emperor  Tiberius,  and  the  other  a  domestic 
tragedy  which  had  been  for  a  while  the  talk  of  the  town  in 
the  previous  reign.  There  are  also,  besides  the  prologues 
and  epilogues  of  the  several  books,  a  few  pieces  in  which 
Phaedrus  speaks  in  his  own  person,*  defending  himself 
against  detractors  with  an  acrid  tone  which  recalls  the 
Terentian  prologues.  The  collection  formed  the  basis  for 
others ;  but  the  body  of  fables  current  in  the  Middle  Ages 
seems  to  descend  more  directly  from  translations  of  a  larger 
Greek  collection,  made  by  Babrius  in  choliambic  verse, 
about  the  same  time  as  that  of  Phaedrus,  but  probably 
independently  of  his. 

Though  Livy  is  the  single  great  historian  of  the 
Augustan  age,  there  was  throughout  this  period  a  pro- 
fuse production  of  memoirs  and  commentaries,  as  well  as 

*  It  is  one  of  these  which  opens  with  the  two  sonorous  lines  — 

Aesopi  statuam  ingentem  posuere  Attici 
Servumque  aeterna  collocarunt  in  basi, 

which  so  powerfully  affected  the  imagination  of  De  Quincey. 
M 


1 62  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

of  regular  histories.  Augustus  wrote  thirteen  books  of 
memoirs  of  his  own  life  down  to  the  pacification  of  the 
Empire  at  the  close  of  the  Cantabrian  war.  These  are 
lost ;  but  the  Index  Rerum  a  se  Gestarum,  a  brief  epitome 
of  his  career,  which  he  composed  as  a  sort  of  epitaph 
on  himself,  is  extant.  This  document  was  engraved  on 
plates  of  bronze  affixed  to  the  imperial  mausoleum  by 
the  Tiber,  and  copies  of  it  were  inscribed  on  the  various 
temples  dedicated  to  him  in  many  provincial  cities  after 
his  death.  It  is  one  of  these  copies,  engraved  on  the 
vestibule  wall  of  the  temple  of  Augustus  and  Rome  at 
Ancyra  in  Galatia,  which  still  exists  with  inconsiderable 
gaps.  His  two  great  ministers,  Maecenas  and  Agrippa, 
also  composed  memoirs.  The  most  important  work  of 
the  latter  hardly,  however,  falls  within  the  province  of 
literature  ;  it  was  a  commentary  on  the  great  geographical 
survey  of  the  Empire  carried  out  under  his  supervision. 

Gaius  Asinius  Pollio,  already  mentioned  as  a  critic  and 
tragedian,  was  also  the  author  of  the  most  important 
historical  work  of  the  Augustan  age  after  Livy's.  His 
History  of  the  Civil  Wars,  in  seventeen  books,  from  the 
formation  of  the  first  triumvirate  in  60  B.C.  to  the  battle 
of  Philippi,  was  undoubtedly  a  work  of  great  ability  and 
value.  Though  Pollio  was  a  practised  rhetorician,  his 
narrative  style  was  simple  and  austere.  The  fine  ode 
addressed  to  him  by  Horace  during  the  composition  of  this 
history  seems  to  hint  that  in  Horace's  opinion  —  or  perhaps, 
rather,  in  that  of  Horace's  masters — Pollio  would  find  a 
truer  field  for  his  great  literary  ability  in  tragedy.  But 
apart  from  its  artistic  quality,  the  work  of  Pollio  was  of 
the  utmost  value  as  giving  the  view  held  of  the  Civil  wars 
by  a  trained  administrator  of  the  highest  rank.  It  was 
one  of  the  main  sources  used  by  Appian  and  Plutarch, 
and  its  almost  total  loss  is  matter  of  deep  regret. 

An  author  of  less  eminence,  and  belonging  rather  to 
the  class  of  encyclopedists  than  of  historians,  is  Pompeius 


VI.]  Trogus  and  Paterculus.  i63 

Trogus,  the  descendant  of  a  family  of  Narbonese  Gaul, 
which  had  for  two  generations  enjoyed  the  Roman  citizen- 
ship. Besides  works  on  zoology  and  botany,  translated 
or  adapted  from  the  Greek  of  Aristotle  and  Theophrastus, 
Trogus  wrote  an  important  History  of  the  World,  exclusive 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  which  served  as,  and  may  have 
been  designed  to  be,  a  complement  to  that  of  Livy.  The 
original  work,  which  extended  to  forty-four  books,  is  not 
extant ;  but  an  abridgment,  which  was  executed  in  the 
age  of  the  Antonines  by  one  Marcus  Junianus  Justinus, 
and  has  fortunately  escaped  the  fate  which  overtook  the 
abridgment  of  Livy  made  about  the  same  time,  preserves  the 
main  outlines  and  much  of  the  actual  form  of  the  original. 
Justin,  whose  individual  talent  was  but  small,  had  the  good 
sense  to  leave  the  diction  of  his  original  as  far  as  possible 
unaltered.  The  pure  and  vivacious  style,  and  the  evident 
care  and  research  which  Trogus  himself,  or  the  Greek 
historians  whom  he  follows,  had  bestowed  on  the  material, 
make  the  work  one  of  very  considerable  value.  Its  title, 
Historiae  Philippicae,  is  borrowed  from  that  of  a  history 
conceived  on  a  somewhat  similar  plan  by  Theopompus, 
the  pupil  of  Isocrates,  in  or  after  the  reign  of  Alexander 
the  Great ;  and  it  followed  Theopompus  in  making  the 
Macedonian  Empire  the  core  round  which  the  history  of 
the  various  countries  included  in  or  bordering  upon  it  was 
arranged. 

Gaius  Velleius  Paterculus,  a  Roman  officer,  who  after 
passing  with  credit  through  high  military  appointments, 
entered  the  general  administrative  service  of  the  Empire, 
and  rose  to  the  praetorship,  wrote,  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius, 
an  abridgment  of  Roman  history  in  two  books,  which 
hardly  rises  beyond  the  mark  of  the  military  man  who 
dabbles  in  letters.  The  pretentiousness  of  his  style  is 
partly  due  to  the  declining  taste  of  the  period,  partly  to 
an  idea  of  his  own  that  he  could  write  in  the  manner 
of  Sallust.  It  alternates  between  a  sort  of  laboured 


164  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

sprightliness  and  a  careless  conversational  manner  full  of 
endless  parentheses.  Yet  Velleius  had  two  real  merits ; 
the  eye  of  the  trained  soldier  for  character,  and  an 
unaffected,  if  not  a  very  intelligent,  interest  in  literature. 
Where  he  approaches  his  own  times,  his  servile  attitude 
towards  all  the  members  of  the  imperial  family,  and 
towards  Sejanus,  who  was  still  first  minister  to  Tiberius 
when  the  book  was  published,  makes  him  almost  valueless 
as  a  historian ;  but  in  the  earlier  periods  his  observations 
are  often  just  and  pointed,  and  he  seems  to  have  been 
almost  the  first  historian  who  included  as  an  essential 
part  of  his  work  some  account  of  the  more  eminent 
writers  of  his  country.  A  still  lower  level  of  aim  and 
attainment  is  shown  in  another  work  of  the  same  date 
as  that  of  Velleius,  the  nine  books  of  historical  anecdotes, 
Facta  et  Dicta  Memorabilia,  by  Valerius  Maximus,  whose 
turgid  and  involved  style  is  not  redeemed  by  any  originality 
of  thought  or  treatment. 

The  study  of  archaeology,  both  on  its  linguistic  and 
material  sides,  was  carried  on  in  the  Augustan  age  with 
great  vigour,  though  no  single  name  is  comparable  to  that 
of  Varro  for  extent  and  variety  of  research.  One  of  the 
most  eminent  and  copious  writers  on  these  subjects  was 
Gaius  Julius  Hyginus,  a  Spanish  freedman  of  Augustus, 
who  made  him  principal  keeper  of  tbe  Palatine  library. 
He  was  a  pupil  of  the  Greek  grammarian,  Cornelius 
Alexander  (called  Polyhistor,  from  his  immense  learning), 
and  an  intimate  acquaintance  of  Ovid.  Of  his  voluminous 
works  on  geography,  history,  astrology,  agriculture,  and 
poetry,  all  are  lost  but  two  treatises  on  mythology,  which 
in  their  present  form  are  of  a  much  later  date,  and  are 
at  best  only  abridged  and  corrupted  versions,  if  (as  many 
modern  critics  are  inclined  to  think)  they  are  not  wholly 
the  work  of  some  author  of  the  second  or  third  century. 
Hyginus  was  also  one  of  the  earliest  commentators  cm 
Virgil ;  he  possessed  among  *  his  treasures  a  manuscript 


VI.T  Celsus.  165 

of  the  Georgics,  which  came  from  Virgil's  own  house, 
though  it  was  not  actually  written  by  his  hand  ;  and  many 
of  his  annotations  and  criticisms  on  the  Aeneid  are  pre- 
served by  Aulus  Gellius  and  later  commentators.  A  little 
later,  in  the  reigns  of  Tiberius  and  Claudius,  Virgilian 
criticism  was  carried  on  by  Quintus  Remmius  Palaemon 
of  Vicenza,  the  most  fashionable  teacher  in  the  capital, 
and  the  author  of  a  famous  Latin  grammar  on  which  all 
subsequent  ones  were  more  or  less  based.  Perhaps  the 
most  distinguished  of  Augustan  grammarians  was  another 
celebrated  teacher,  Marcus  Verrius  Flaccus,  who  was 
chosen  by  Augustus  as  tutor  for  his  two  grandsons,  and 
thenceforward  held  his  school  in  the  imperial  residence 
on  the  Palatine.  His  lexicon,  entitled  De  Verborum 
Significant,  was  a  rich  treasury  of  antiquarian  research : 
such  parts  of  it  as  survive  in  the  abridgments  made  from 
it  in  the  second  and  eighth  centuries,  by  Sextus  Pompeius 
Festus  and  Paulus  Diaconus,  are  still  among  our  most 
valuable  sources  for  the  study  of  early  Latin  language 
and  institutions.  The  more  practical  side  of  science  in 
the  same  period  was  ably  represented  by  Aulus  Cornelius 
Celsus,  the  compiler  of  an  encyclopedia  which  included 
comprehensive  treatises  not  only  on  oratory,  jurisprudence, 
and  philosophy,  but  on  the  arts  of  war,  agriculture,  and 
medicine.  The  eight  books  dealing  with  this  last  subject 
are  the  only  part  of  the  work  that  has  been  preserved. 
This  treatise,  which  is  written  in  a  pure,  simple,  and 
elegant  Latin,  became  a  standard  work.  It  was  one  of 
the  earliest  books  printed  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
remained  a  text-book  for  medical  students  till  within  living 
memory.  Medical  science  had  then  reached,  in  the  hands 
of  its  leading  professors,  a  greater  perfection  than  it 
regained  till  the  eighteenth  century.  Celsus,  though  not, 
so  far  as  is  known,  the  author  of  any  important  discovery 
or  improvement,  had  fully  mastered  a  branch  of  knowl- 
edge which  even  then  was  highly  complicated,  and  takes 


166  Latin  Literature.  (II. 

rank  oy  his  extensive  and  accurate  knowledge,  as  well 
as  by  his  rare  literary  skill,  with  the  highest  names  in  his 
profession.  That  with  his  eminent  medical  acquirement 
he  should  have  been  able  to  write  at  length  on  so  many 
other  subjects  as  well,  has  long  been  a  subject  of  perplexity. 
The  cold  censure  of  Quintilian,  who  refers  to  him  slightly 
as  "  a  man  of  moderate  ability,"  may  be  principally  aimed 
at  the  treatise  on  rhetoric,  which  formed  a  section  of  his 
encyclopedia.  Columella,  writing  in  the  next  age,  speaks 
of  him  as  one  of  the  two  leading  authorities  on  agri- 
culture ;  and  he  is  also  quoted  as  an  authority  of  some 
value  on  military  tactics.  Yet  we  cannot  suppose  that 
the  encyclopedist,  however  great  his  excellence  in  one 
or  even  more  subjects,  would  not  lay  himself  open  in 
others  to  the  censure  of  the  specialist.  It  seems  most 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  Celsus  was  one  of  a  class  which 
is  not,  after  all,  very  uncommon — doctors  of  eminent  knowl- 
edge and  skill  in  their  own  art,  who  at  the  same  time 
are  men  of  wide  literary  culture  and  far-ranging  practical 
interests. 

In  striking  contrast  to  Celsus  as  regards  width  of  knowl- 
edge and  literary  skill,  though  no  less  famous  in  the 
history  of  his  own  art,  is  his  contemporary,  the  celebrated 
architect  Vitruvius  Pollio.  The  ten  books  De  Architectura, 
dedicated  to  Augustus  about  the  year  14  B.C.,  are  the 
single  important  work  on  classical  architecture  which  has 
come  down  from  the  ancient  world,  and,  as  such,  have 
been  the  object  of  continuous  professional  study  from 
the  Renaissance  down  to  the  present  day.  But  their 
reputation  is  not  due  to  any  literary  merit.  Vitruvius, 
however  able  as  an  architect,  was  a  man  of  little  general 
knowledge,  and  far  from  handy  with  his  pen.  His  style 
varies  between  immoderate  diffuseness  and  obscure  brevity ; 
sometimes  he  is  barely  intelligible,  and  he  never  writes 
with  grace.  Where  in  his  introductory  chapters  or  else- 
where he  ventures  beyond  his  strict  province,  his  writing 


VI.]  The  Elder  Seneca.  167 

is   that    of  a  half-educated   man   who   has  lost  simplicity 
without  acquiring  skill. 

Among  the  innumerable  rhetoricians  of  this  age  one 
only  requires  formal  notice,  Lucius  Annaeus  Seneca  of 
Cordova,  the  father  of  the  famous  philosopher,  and  the 
grandfather  of  the  poet  Lucan.  His  long  life  reached  from 
before  the  outbreak  of  war  betweem  Caesar  and  Pompeius 
till  after  the  death  of  Tiberius.  His  only  extant  work, 
a  collection  of  themes  treated  in  the  schools  of  rhetoric, 
was  written  in  his  old  age,  after  the  fall  of  Sejanus,  and 
bears  witness  to  the  amazing  power  of  memory  which 
he  tells  us  himself  was,  when  in  its  prime,  absolutely 
unique.  How  much  of  his  life  was  spent  at  Rome  is 
uncertain.  As  a  young  man  he  had  heard  all  the  greatest 
orators  of  the  time  except  Cicero;  and  up  to  the  end 
of  his  life  he  could  repeat  word  for  word  and  without 
effort  whole  passages,  if  not  whole  speeches,  to  which 
he  had  listened  many  years  before.  His  ten  books  of 
Controversiae  are  only  extant  in  a  mutilated  form,  which 
comprises  thirty-five  out  of  seventy-four  themes ;  to  these 
is  prefixed  a  single  book  of  Suasoriac,  which  is  also 
imperfect.  The  work  is  a  mine  of  information  for  the 
history  of  rhetoric  under  Augustus  and  Tiberius,  and 
incidentally  includes  many  interesting  quotations,  anec- 
dotes, and  criticisms.  But  we  feel  in  reading  it  that  we 
have  passed  definitely  away  from  the  Golden  Age.  Yet 
once  more  "  they  have  forgotten  to  speak  the  Latin  tongue 
at  Rome."  The  Latinity  of  the  later  Empire  is  as  distinct 
from  that  of  the  Augustan  age  as  this  last  is  from  the 
Latinity  of  the  Republic.  Seneca,  it  is  true,  was  not  an 
Italian  by  birth ;  but  it  is  just  this  influx  of  the  provinces 
into  literature,  which  went  on  under  the  early  Empire 
with  continually  accelerating  force,  that  determined  what 
type  the  new  Latinity  should  take.  Gaul,  Spain,  and 
Africa  are  henceforth  side  by  side  with  Italy,  and  Italy 
herself  sinks  towards  the  level  of  a  province.  Within  thirty 


1 68  Latin  Literature.  [II. 

years  of  the  death  of  the  elder  Seneca  "  the  fatal  secret 
of  empire,  that  Emperors  could  be  made  elsewhere  than 
at  Rome,"  was  discovered  by  the  Spanish  and  German 
legions ;  of  hardly  less  moment  was  the  other  discovery, 
that  Latin  could  be  written  in  another  than  the  Roman 
manner.  In  literature  no  less  than  in  politics  the  discovery 
meant  the  final  breaking  up  of  the  old  world,  and  the 
slow  birth  of  a  new  one  through  alternate  torpors  and 
agonies.  It  might  already  have  been  said  of  Rome,  in 
the  words  of  a  poet  of  four  hundred  years  later,  that  she 
had  made  a  city  of  what  had  been  a  world.  But  in  this 
absorption  of  the  world  into  a  single  citizenship,  the  city 
itself  was  ceasing  to  be  a  world  of  its  own;  and  with 
the  self-centred  urbs  passed  away  the  urbanus  sermo,  that 
austere  and  noble  language  which  was  the  finest  flower 
of  her  civilisation. 


III. 

THE    EMPIRE. 


THE   ROME  OF  NERO  :    SENECA,   LUCAN,   PETRONIUS. 

THE  later  years  of  the  Julio-Claudian  dynasty,  while  they 
brought  about  the  complete  transformation  of  the  govern- 
ment into  an  absolute  monarchy,  also  laid  the  foundations 
for  that  reign  of  the  philosophers  which  had  been  dreamed 
of  by  Plato,  and  which  had  never  been  so  nearly  realised 
as  it  was  in  Rome  during  the  second  century  after  Christ. 
The  Stoical  philosophy,  passing  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
schools  to  become  at  once  a  religious  creed  and  a  practical 
code  of  morals  for  everyday  use,  penetrated  deeply  into 
the  life  of  Rome.  At  first  associated  with  the  aristocratic 
opposition  to  the  imperial  government,  it  passed  through  a 
period  of  persecution  which  only  strengthened  and  con- 
solidated its  growth.  The  final  struggle  took  place  under 
Domitian,  whose  edict  of  the  year  94,  expelling  all  philoso- 
phers from  Rome,  was  followed  two  years  afterwards  by  his 
assassination  and  the  establishment,  for  upwards  of  eighty 
years,  of  a  government  deeply  imbued  with  the  principles 
of  Stoicism. 

Of  the  men  who  set  this  revolution  in  motion  by  their 
writings,  the  earliest  and  the  most  distinguished  was  Lucius 
Annaeus  Seneca,  the  son  of  the  rhetorician.  Though  only 
of  the  second  rank  as  a  classic,  he  is  a  figure  of  very  great 
importance  in  the  history  of  human  thought  from  the  work 
he  did  in  the  exposition  of  the  new  creed.  As  a  practical 


172  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

exponent  of  morals,  he  stands,  with  Plutarch,  at  the  head 
of  all  Greek  and  Roman  writers. 

The  life  of  Seneca  was  one  of  singularly  dramatic  con- 
trasts and  vicissitudes.  He  was  born  in  the  year  4  B.C.,  at 
Cordova,  where,  at  a  somewhat  advanced  age,  his  father 
had  married  Helvia,  a  lady  of  high  birth,  and  brought  up 
in  the  strictest  family  traditions.  Through  the  influence 
of  his  mother's  family  (her  sister  had  married  Vitrasius 
Pollio,  who  for  sixteen  years  was  viceroy  of  Egypt),  the 
way  was  easy  to  him  for  advancement  in  the  public  service. 
But  delicate  health,  which  continued  throughout  his  life, 
kept  him  as  a  young  man  from  taking  more  than  a  nominal 
share  in  administrative  work.  He  passed  into  the  senate 
through  the  quaestorship,  and  became  a  well-known  figure 
at  court  during  the  reign  of  Caligula.  On  the  accession  of 
Claudius,  he  was  banished  to  Corsica  at  the  instance  of  the 
Empress  Messalina,  on  the  charge  of  being  the  favoured 
lover  of  Julia  Livilla,  Caligula's  youngest  sister.  Whether 
the  scandal  which  connected  his  name  with  hers,  or  with 
that  of  her  sister  Agrippina,  had  any  other  foundation  than 
the  prurient  gossip  which  raged  round  all  the  members  of 
the  imperial  family  may  well  be  doubted ;  but  when 
Agrippina  married  Claudius,  after  the  downfall  and  execu- 
tion of  Messalina  seven  years  later,  she  recalled  him  from 
exile,  obtained  his  nomination  to  the  quaestorship,  and 
appointed  him  tutor  to  her  son  Domitius  Nero,  then  a  boy 
of  ten.  The  influence  gained  by  Seneca,  an  accomplished 
courtier  and  a  clever  man  of  the  world,  as  well  as  a  brilliant 
scholar,  over  his  young  pupil  was  for  a  long  time  almost 
unbounded  ;  and  when  Nero  became  Emperor  at  the  age  of 
seventeen,  Seneca,  in  conjunction  with  his  close  friend, 
Afranius  Burrus,  commander  of  the  imperial  guards,  became 
practically  the  administrator  of  the  Empire.  His  philosophy 
was  not  one  which  rejected  wealth  or  power ;  a  fortune  of 
three  million  pounds  may  have  been  amassed  without 
absolute  dishonesty,  or  even  forced  upon  him,  as  he  pleads 


I.I  Seneca.  173 

himself,  by  the  lavish  generosity  of  his  pupil ;  but  there  can 
De  no  doubt  that  in  indulging  the  weaknesses  and  passions 
of  Nero,  Seneca  went  far  beyond  the  limits,  not  only  of 
honour,  but  of  ordinary  prudence.  The  mild  and  en- 
lightened administration  of  the  earlier  years  of  the  new 
reign,  the  famous  quinquennium  Neronts,  which  was  looked 
back  to  afterwards  as  a  sort  of  brief  golden  age,  may  indeed 
be  ascribed  largely  to  Seneca's  influence ;  but  this  influence 
was  based  on  an  excessive  indulgence  of  Nero's  caprices, 
which  soon  worked  out  its  own  punishment.  His  consent 
to  the  murder  of  Agrippina  was  the  death-blow  to  his 
influence  for  good,  or  to  any  self-respect  that  he  may  till 
then  have  retained ;  the  death  of  Burrus  left  him  without 
support;  and,  by  retiring  into  private  life  and  formally 
offering  to  make  over  his  whole  fortune  to  the  Emperor,  he 
did  not  long  delay  his  fate.  In  the  year  65,  on  the  pretext 
of  complicity  in  the  conspiracy  of  Piso,  he  was  commanded 
to  commit  suicide,  and  obeyed  with  that  strange  mixture 
of  helplessness  and  heroism  with  which  the  orders  of  the 
master  of  the  world  were  then  accepted  as  a  sort  of  in- 
evitable law  of  nature. 

The  philosophical  writings  of  Seneca  were  extremely 
voluminous ;  and  though  a  large  number  of  them  are  lost, 
he  is  still  one  of  the  bulkiest  of  ancient  authors.  They  fall 
into  three  main  groups  :  formal  treatises  on  ethics ;  moral 
letters  (epistolae  morales},  dealing  in  a  less  continuous  way 
with  the  same  general  range  of  subjects ;  and  writings  on 
natural  philosophy,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Stoical 
system.  The  whole  of  these  are,  however,  animated  by  the 
same  spirit ;  to  the  Stoical  philosophy,  physics  were  merely 
a  branch  of  ethics,  and  a  study  to  be  pursued  for  the  sake 
of  moral  edification,  not  of  reaching  truth  by  accurate 
observation  or  research.  The  discussions  of  natural  phe- 
nomena are  mere  texts  for  religious  meditations ;  and 
though  the  eight  books  of  Naturales  Quaestiones  were  used 
as  a  text-book  of  physical  science  in  the  Middle  Ages,  they 


1/4  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

are  totally  without  any  scientific  value.  So,  too,  the  twenty 
books  of  moral  letters,  nominally  addressed  to  Lucilius, 
the  procurator  of  Sicily,  merely  represent  a  slight  variation 
of  method  from  the  more  formal  treatises,  On  Anger,  On 
Clemency,  On  Consolation,  On  Peace  of  Mind,  On  the  Short- 
ness of  Life,  On  Giving  and  Receiving  Favours,  which  are 
the  main  substance  of  Seneca's  writings. 

As  a  moral  writer,  Seneca  stands  deservedly  high. 
Though  infected  with  the  rhetorical  vices  of  the  age,  his 
treatises  are  full  of  striking  and  often  gorgeous  eloquence, 
and  in  their  combination  of  high  thought  with  deep  feeling, 
have  rarely,  if  at  all,  been  surpassed.  The  rhetorical 
manner  was  so  essentially  part  of  Seneca's  nature,  that  the 
warm  colouring  and  perpetual  mannerism  of  his  language 
does  not  imply  any  insincerity  or  want  of  earnestness. 
In  spite  of  the  laboured  style,  there  is  no  failure  either  in 
lucidity  or  in  force,  and  even  where  the  rhetoric  is  most 
profuse,  it  seldom  is  without  a  solid  basis  of  thought.  "  It 
would  not  be  easy,"  says  a  modern  scholar,  who  was 
himself  averse  to  all  ornament  of  diction,  and  deeply 
penetrated  with  the  spirit  of  Stoicism,  "  to  name  any 
modern  writer  who  has  treated  on  morality  and  has  said  so 
much  that  is  practically  good  and  true,  or  has  treated  the 
matter  in  so  attractive  a  way." 

In  the  moral  writings  we  have  the  picture  of  Seneca  the 
philosopher ;  Seneca  the  courtier  is  less  attractively  presented 
in  the  curious  pamphlet  called  the  Apocolocyntosis,  a  silly 
and  spiteful  attack  on  the  memory  of  the  Emperor  Claudius, 
written  to  make  the  laughter  of  an  afternoon  at  the  court 
of  Nero.  The  gross  bad  taste  of  this  satire  is  hardly 
relieved  by  any  great  wit  in  the  treatment,  and  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  author  would  stand  higher  if  it  had  not  survived 
the  occasion  for  which  it  was  written. 

Among  Seneca's  extant  works  are  also  included  nine 
tragedies,  written  in  imitation  of  the  Greek,  upon  the  well- 
worn  subjects  of  the  epic  cycle.  At  what  period  of  his  life 


I.]  Seneca,  175 

they  were  written  cannot  be  ascertained.  As  a  rule,  only 
young  authors  had  courage  enough  to  attempt  the  dis- 
credited task  of  flogging  this  dead  horse ;  but  it  is  not 
improbable  that  these  dramas  were  written  by  Seneca  in 
mature  life,  in  deference  to  his  imperial  pupil's  craze  for 
the  stage.  All  the  rhetorical  vices  of  his  prose  are  here 
exaggerated.  The  tragedies  are  totally  without  dramatic 
life,  consisting  merely  of  a  series  of  declamatory  speeches, 
in  correct  but  monotonous  versification,  interspersed  with 
choruses,  which  only  differ  from  the  speeches  by  being 
written  in  lyric  metres  instead  of  the  iambic.  To  say  that 
the  tragedies  are  without  merit  would  be  an  overstatement, 
for  Seneca,  though  no  poet,  remained  even  in  his  poetry 
an  extremely  able  man  of  letters  and  an  accomplished 
rhetorician.  His  declamation  comes  in  the  same  tones 
from  all  his  puppets  ;  but  it  is  often  grandiose,  and  some- 
times really  fine.  The  lines  with  which  the  curtain  falls  in 
his  Medea  remind  one,  by  their  startling  audacity,  of  Victor 
Hugo  in  his  most  Titanic  vein.  As  the  only  extant  Latin 
tragedies,  these  pieces  had  a  great  effect  upon  the  early 
drama  of  the  sixteenth  century  in  England  and  elsewhere. 
In  the  well-known  verses  prefixed  to  the  first  folio  Shake- 
speare, Jonson  calls  on  "  him  of  Cordova  dead,"  in  the  same 
breath  with  Aeschylus  and  Euripides ;  and  long  after  the 
Jacobean  period  the  false  tradition  remained  which,  by 
putting  these  lifeless  copies  on  the  same  footing  as  their 
great  originals,  perplexed  and  stultified  literary  criticism, 
mucli  as  the  criticism  of  classical  art  was  confused  by  an 
age  which  drew  no  distinction  between  late  Graeco- Roman 
sculpture  and  the  finest  work  of  Praxiteles  or  Pheidias. 

By  far  the  most  brilliant  poet  of  the  Neronian  age  was 
Seneca's  nephew,  Marcus  Annaeus  Lucanus.  His  father, 
Annaeus  Mela,  the  younger  brother  of  the  philosopher,  is 
known  chiefly  through  his  more  distinguished  son ;  an 
interesting  but  puzzling  notice  in  a  life  of  Lucan  speaks 
of  him  as  famous  at  Rome  "  from  his  pursuit  of  the  quiet 


176  Latin  Literature.  [HI. 

life."  This  may  imply  refusal  of  some  great  office  when 
his  elder  brother  was  practically  ruler  of  the  Empire ;  what- 
ever stirrings  of  ambition  he  suppressed  broke  out  with 
accumulated  force  in  his  son.  Lucan's  short  life  was  one 
of  feverish  activity.  At  twenty-one  he  made  his  first  public 
sensation  by  the  recitation,  in  the  theatre  of  Pompeius,  of 
a  panegyric  on  Nero,  who  had  already  murdered  his  own 
mother,  but  had  not  yet  broken  with  the  poet's  uncle. 
Soon  afterwards,  he  was  advanced  to  the  quaestorship,  and 
a  seat  in  the  college  of  Augurs :  but  his  brilliant  poetical 
reputation  seems  to  have  excited  the  jealousy  of  the  artist- 
emperor;  a  violent  quarrel  broke  out  between  them,  and 
Lucan,  already  in  theory  an  ardent  republican,  became  one 
of  the  principal  movers  in  the  conspiracy  of  Piso.  The 
plan  discussed  among  the  conspirators  of  assassinating 
Nero  while  in  the  act  of  singing  on  the  stage  would,  no 
doubt,  commend  itself  specially  to  the  young  poet  whom 
the  Emperor  had  forbidden  to  recite  in  public.  When  the 
conspiracy  was  detected,  Lucan's  fortitude  soon  gave  way ; 
he  betrayed  one  accomplice  after  another,  one  of  the  first 
names  he  surrendered  being  that  of  his  mother,  Acilia. 
The  promise  of  pardon,  under  which  his  confessions  were 
obtained,  was  not  kept  after  they  were  completed ;  and 
the  execution  of  Lucan,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  while 
it  cut  short  a  remarkable  poetical  career,  rid  the  world  of 
a  very  poor  creature.  The  final  effort  of  bravado  with 
which  he  died,  declaiming  a  passage  from  his  own  epic,  was 
small  ground  for  Shelley  to  name  him  in  the  same  verse  with 
Sydney  and  Chatterton. 

Yet  the  Pharsalia,  the  only  large  work  which  Lucan  left 
complete,  or  all  but  complete,  among  a  number  of  essays 
in  different  styles  of  poetry,  and  the  only  work  of  his 
which  has  been  preserved,  is  a  poem  which,  in  spite  of  its 
immaturity  and  bad  taste,  compels  admiration  by  its  eleva- 
tion of  thought  and  sustained  brilliance  of  execution.  Pure 
rhetoric  has,  perhaps,  never  come  quite  so  near  being 


I.]  Lucan.  177 

poetry ;  and  if  the  perpetual  overstraining  of  both  thought 
and  expression  inevitably  ends  by  fatiguing  the  reader, 
there  are  at  least  few  instances  of  a  large  work  throughout 
which  so  lofty  and  grandiose  a  style  is  carried  with  such 
elasticity  and  force.  The  Pharsalia  is  full  of  quotations, 
and  this  itself  is  no  small  praise.  Lines  like  Nil  actum 
credens  dum  quid  superesset  agendum,  or  Nee  sibi,  sed  toti 
genifum  se  credere  mundo,  or  lupiter  est  quodcunquc  vides 
quocunque  moveris,  or  the  sad  and  noble 

Victurosque  dei  celant,  ut  vivere  durent, 
Felix  esse  mori — 

are  as  well  known  and  have  sunk  as  deep  as  the  great  lines 
of  Virgil  himself;  and  not  only  in  single  lines,  but  in  longer 
passages  of  lofty  thought  or  sustained  imagination,  as  in 
his  description  of  the  dream  of  Pompeius,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  seventh  book ;  or  the  passage  on  the  extension  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  later  in  the  same  book ;  or  the  magnificent 
speech  of  Cato  when  he  refuses  to  seek  counsel  of  the 
oracle  of  Ammon,  Lucan  sometimes  touches  a  point 
where  he  challenges  comparison  with  his  master.  In  these 
passages,  without  any  delicacy  of  modulation,  with  a  limited 
range  of  rhythm,  his  verse  has  a  metallic  clangour  that  stirs 
the  blood  like  a  trumpet-note.  But  his  range  of  ideas  is 
as  limited  as  that  of  his  rhythms ;  and  the  thought  is  not 
sustained  by  any  basis  of  character.  His  fierce  republi- 
canism sits  side  by  side  with  flattery  of  the  reigning  Emperor 
more  gross  and  servile  than  had  till  then  been  known  as 
Rome.  He  makes  no  attempt  to  realise  his  persons  or  to 
grasp  the  significance  of  events.  Caesar,  Pompeius,  Cato 
himself — the  hero  of  the  epic  —  are  not  human  beings,  but 
mere  lay-figures  round  which  he  drapes  his  gorgeous  rhetoric. 
The  Civil  wars  are  alternately  regarded  as  the  death-agony 
of  freedom  and  as  the  destined  channel  through  which  the 
world  was  led  to  the  blessings  of  an  uncontrolled  despotism. 
His  ideas  are  borrowed  indifferently  from  the  Epicurean 


178  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

and  Stoical  philosophies  according  to  the  convenience  of 
the  moment.  Great  events  and  actions  do  not  kindle  in 
him  any  imaginative  sympathy ;  they  are  greedily  seized  as 
opportunities  for  more  and  more  immoderate  flights  of 
extravagant  embellishment.  He  "  prates  of  mountains ; " 
his  "  phrase  conjures  the  wandering  stars,  and  makes  them 
stand  like  wonder- wounded  hearers ;  "  freedom,  virtue,  fate, 
the  sea  and  the  sun,  gods  and  men  before  whom  the  gods 
themselves  stand  abased,  hurtle  through  the  poem  in  a  con- 
fused thunder  of  sonorous  phrase.  Such  brilliance,  in  the 
exact  manner  that  was  then  most  admired,  dazzled  his 
contemporaries  and  retained  a  permanent  influence  over 
later  poets.  Statius,  himself  an  author  of  far  higher  poetical 
gifts,  speaks  of  him  in  terms  of  almost  extravagant  admira- 
tion ;  with  a  more  balanced  judgment  Quintilian  sums  him 
up  in  words  which  may  be  taken  as  on  the  whole  the  final 
criticism  adopted  by  the  world ;  ardens  et  concitatus  et 
sententiis  clarissimus,  et,  ut  dicam  quod  sentio,  magis  oratori- 
bus  quant  poetis  imitandus. 

One  of  Lucan's  intimate  friends  was  a  young  man  of 
high  family,  Aulus  Persius  Flaccus  of  Volaterrae  in  Etruria, 
a  near  relation  of  the  celebrated  Arria,  wife  of  Paetus. 
Through  his  kinswoman  he  was  early  introduced  to  the 
circle  of  earnest  thinkers  and  moralists  among  whom  the 
higher  life  was  kept  up  at  Rome  amid  the  corruption  of 
the  Neronian  age.  The  gentle  and  delicate  boy  won  the 
hearts  of  all  who  knew  him.  When  he  died,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-eight,  a  little  book  of  six  satires,  which  he  had 
written  with  much  effort  and  at  long  intervals,  was  retouched 
by  his  master,  the  Stoic  philosopher  Cornutus,  and  published 
by  another  friend,  Caesius  Bassus,  himself  a  poet  of  some 
reputation.  Several  other  writings  which  Persius  left  were 
destroyed  by  the  advice  of  Cornutus.  The  six  pieces  — 
only  between  six  and  seven  hundred  lines  in  all  —  were  at 
once  recognised  as  showing  a  refined  and  uncommon 
literary  gift.  Persius,  we  are  informed,  had  no  admiration 


I.]  Persius.  179 

for  the  genius  of  Seneca ;  and,  indeed,  no  two  styles,  though 
both  are  deeply  artificial,  could  be  more  unlike  one  another. 
With  all  his  moral  elevation,  Seneca  was  a  courtier,  an 
opportunist,  a  man  of  the  world :  Stoicism  took  a  very 
different  colour  in  the  boy  "  of  maidenly  modesty,"  as  his 
biographer  tells  us,  who  lived  in  a  household  of  devoted 
female  relations,  and  only  knew  the  world  as  a  remote 
spectator.  Though  within  the  narrow  field  of  his  own 
experience  he  shows  keen  observation  and  delicate  power 
of  portraiture,  the  world  that  he  knows  is  mainly  one  of 
books ;  his  perpetual  imitations  of  Horace  are  not  so  much 
plagiarisms  as  the  unaffected  outcome  of  the  mind  of  a 
very  young  student,  to  whom  the  Satires  of  Horace  were 
more  familiar  than  the  Rome  of  his  own  day.  So,  too, 
the  involved  and  obscure  style  which  has  made  him  the 
paradise  of  commentators  is  less  a  deliberate  literary 
artifice  than  the  natural  effect  of  looking  at  everything 
through  a  literary  medium,  and  choosing  phrases,  not  for 
their  own  fitness,  but  for  the  associations  they  recall.  His 
deep  moral  earnestness,  his  gentleness  of  nature,  and,  it 
must  be  added,  his  want  of  humour,  made  him  a  favourite 
author  beyond  the  circles  which  were  merely  attracted  by 
his  verbal  obscurities  and  the  way  in  which  he  locks  up 
his  meaning  in  hints  and  allusions.  His  unquestionable 
dramatic  power  might,  in  later  life,  have  ripened  into  really 
great  achievement ;  as  it  is,  he  lives  to  us  chiefly  in  the  few 
beautiful  passages  where  he  slips  into  being  natural,  and 
draws,  with  a  grace  and  charm  that  are  strikingly  absent 
from  the  rest  of  his  writing,  the  picture  of  his  own  quiet 
life  as  a  student,  and  of  the  awakening  of  his  moral  and 
intellectual  nature  at  the  touch  of  philosophy. 

Lucan  and  Persius  represent  the  effect  which  Roman 
Stoicism  had  on  two  natures  of  equal  sensibility  but  widely 
different  quality  and  taste.  Among  the  many  other  pro- 
fessors or  adherents  of  the  Stoic  school  in  the  age  of  Nero, 
a  considerable  number  were  also  authors,  but  the  habit  of 


l8o  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

writing  in  Greek,  which  a  hundred  years  later  grew  to  such 
proportions  as  to  threaten  the  continued  existence  of  Latin 
literature,  had  already  taken  root.  The  three  most  dis- 
tinguished representatives  of  the  stricter  Stoicism,  Cornutus, 
Quintus  Sextius,  and  Gaius  Musonius  Rufus  (the  first  and 
last  of  whom  were  exiled  by  Nero)  wrote  on  philosophy 
in  Greek,  though  they  seem  to  have  written  in  Latin  on 
other  subjects.  Musonius  was,  indeed,  hardly  more  Roman 
than  his  own  most  illustrious  pupil,  the  Phrygian  Epictetus. 
Stoicism,  as  they  understood  it,  left  no  room  for  nationality, 
and  little  for  writing  as  a  fine  art. 

This  growing  prevalence  of  Greek  at  Rome  combined 
with  political  reasons  to  check  the  production  of  important 
prose  works.  History  more  especially  languished  under 
the  jealous  censorship  of  the  government.  The  only  im- 
portant historical  work  of  the  period  is  one  of  which  the 
subject  could  hardly  excite  suspicion,  the  Life  of  Alexander 
the  Great,  by  Quintus  Curtius  Rufus.  The  precise  date  is 
uncertain,  and  different  theories  have  assigned  it  to  an 
earlier  or  later  period  in  the  reign  of  Augustus  or  of  Vespasian. 
The  subject  is  one  which  hardly  any  degree  of  dulness  in 
the  writer  could  make  wholly  uninteresting.  But  the  clear 
and  orderly  narrative  of  Curtius,  written  in  a  style  studied 
from  that  of  Livy,  but  kept  within  simpler  limits,  has  real 
merit  of  its  own ;  and  against  his  imperfect  technical 
knowledge  of  campaigns  and  battles  must  be  set  the  pains 
he  took  to  consult  the  best  Greek  authorities. 

Memoirs  were  written  in  the  Neronian  age  by  numbers 
both  of  men  and  women.  Those  of  the  Empress  Agrippina 
were  used  by  Tacitus  ;  and  we  have  references  to  others  by 
the  two  great  Roman  generals  of  the  period,  Suetonius  Pau- 
linus  and  Domitius  Corbulo.  The  production  of  scientific 
or  technical  treatises,  which  had  been  so  profuse  in  the 
preceding  generation,  still  went  on.  Only  two  of  any  im- 
portance are  extant;  one  of  these,  the  Chorographia  of 
Pompom'us  Mela,  a  geographical  manual  based  on  the 


I.]  Columella.  181 

best  authorities  and  embellished  with  descriptions  of  places, 
peoples,  and  customs,  is  valuable  as  the  earliest  and  one  of 
the  most  complete  systems  of  ancient  geography  which 
we  possess ;  but  in  literary  merit  it  falls  far  short  of  the 
other,  the  elaborate  work  on  agriculture  by  Lucius  Junius 
Moderatus  Columella.  Both  Mela  and  Columella  were 
natives  of  Spain,  and  thus  belong  to  the  Spanish  school 
of  Latin  authors,  which  begins  with  the  Senecas  and  is 
continued  later  by  Martial  and  Quintilian.  But  while  Mela, 
in  his  style,  followed  the  new  fashion,  Columella,  an 
enthusiast  for  antiquity  and  a  warm  admirer  of  the  Augustan 
writers,  reverts  to  the  more  classical  manner,  which  a  little 
later  became  once  more  predominant  in  the  writers  of  the 
Flavian  period.  His  simple  and  dignified  style  is  much  above 
the  level  of  a  mere  technical  treatise.  His  prose,  indeed, 
may  be  read  with  more  pleasure  than  the  verse  in  which, 
by  a  singular  caprice,  one  of  the  twelve  books  is  composed. 
In  one  of  the  most  beautiful  episodes  of  the  Georgics, 
Virgil  had  briefly  touched  on  the  subject  of  gardening,  and 
left  it  to  be  treated  by  others  who  might  come  after  him  : 
praetereo  atque  aliis  post  me  memoranda  relinquo.  At  the 
instance,  he  says,  of  friends,  Columella  attempts  to  fill  up 
the  gap  by  a  fifth  Georgic  on  horticulture.  He  approaches 
the  task  so  modestly,  and  carries  it  out  so  simply,  that 
critics  are  not  inclined  to  be  very  severe ;  but  he  was  no 
poet,  and  the  book  is  little  more  than  a  cento  from  Virgil, 
carefully  and  smoothly  written,  and  hardly  if  at  all  disfigured 
by  pretentiousness  or  rhetorical  conceits. 

The  same  return  upon  the  Virgilian  manner  is  shown  in 
the  seven  Eclogues,  composed  in  the  early  years  of  Nero's 
reign,  by  Titus  Calpurnius  Siculus.  These  are  remarkable 
rather  as  the  only  specimens  for  nearly  three  hundred 
years  of  a  direct  attempt  to  continue  the  manner  of  Virgil's 
Bucolics  than  for  any  substantive  merit  of  their  own.  That 
manner,  indeed,  is  so  exceptionally  unmanageable  that  it 
is  hardly  surprising  that  it  should  have  been  passed  over 


1 82  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

by  later  poets  of  high  original  gift ;  but  that  even  poets 
of  the  second  and  third  rate  should  hardly  ever  have 
attempted  to  imitate  poems  which  stood  in  the  very  first 
rank  of  fame  bears  striking  testimony  to  Virgil's  singular 
quality  of  unapproachableness.  The  Eclogues  of  Calpurnius 
(six  of  them  are  Eclogues  within  the  ordinary  meaning,  the 
seventh  rather  a  brief  Georgic  on  the  care  of  sheep  and 
goats,  made  formally  a  pastoral  by  being  put  into  the  mouth 
of  an  old  shepherd  sitting  in  the  shade  at  midday)  are, 
notwithstanding  their  almost  servile  imitation  of  Virgil, 
written  in  such  graceful  verse,  and  with  so  few  serious  lapses 
of  taste,  that  they  may  be  read  with  considerable  pleasure. 
The  picture,  in  the  sixth  Eclogue,  of  the  fawn  lying  among 
the  white  lilies,  will  recall  to  English  readers  one  of  the 
prettiest  fancies  of  Marvell ;  that  in  the  second,  of  Flora 
scattering  her  tresses  over  the  spring  meadow,  and  Pomona 
playing  under  the  orchard  boughs,  is  at  least  a  vivid 
pictorial  presentment  of  a  sufficiently  well-worn  theme.  A 
more  normal  specimen  of  Calpurnius'  manner  may  be 
instanced  in  the  lines  (v.  52-62)  where  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  passages  in  the  third  Georgic,  the  description  of 
a  long  summer  day  among  the  Italian  hill-pastures,  is 
simply  copied  in  different  words. 

The  didactic  poem  on  volcanoes,  called  Aetna,  probably 
written  by  the  Lucilius  to  whom  Seneca  addressed  his 
writings  on  natural  philosophy,  belongs  to  the  same  period 
and  shows  the  same  influences.  Of  the  other  minor  poetical 
works  of  the  time  the  only  one  which  requires  special 
mention  is  the  tragedy  of  Octavia,  which  is  written  in 
the  same  style  as  those  of  Seneca,  and  was  long  included 
among  his  works.  Its  only  interest  is  as  the  single  extant 
specimen  of  the  fabula  praetexta,  or  drama  with  a  Roman 
subject  and  characters.  The  characters  here  include  Nero 
and  Seneca  himself.  But  the  treatment  is  as  conventional 
and  declamatory  as  that  of  the  mythological  tragedies 
among  which  it  has  been  preserved,  and  the  result,  if 
possible,  even  flatter  and  more  tedious. 


I.]  Petronius.  183 

One  other  work  of  extreme  and  unique  interest  survives 
from  the  reign  of  Nero,  the  fragments  of  a  novel  by 
Petronius  Arbiter,  one  of  the  Emperor's  intimate  circle  in 
the  excesses  of  his  later  years.  In  the  year  66  he  fell  a 
victim  to  the  jealousy  of  the  infamous  and  all  but  omnipotent 
Tigellinus ;  and  on  this  occasion  Tacitus  sketches  his  life 
and  character  in  a  few  of  his  strong  masterly  touches. 
"  His  days  were  passed,"  says  Tacitus,  "  in  sleep,  his  nights 
in  the  duties  or  pleasures  of  life ;  where  others  toiled  for 
fame  he  had  lounged  into  it,  and  he  had  the  reputation  not, 
like  most  members  of  that  profligate  society,  of  a  dissolute 
wanton,  but  of  a  trained  master  in  luxury.  A  sort  of 
careless  ease,  an  entire  absence  of  self-consciousness,  added 
the  charm  of  complete  simplicity  to  all  he  said  and  did. 
Yet,  as  governor  of  Bithynia,  and  afterwards  as  consul,  he 
showed  himself  a  vigorous  and  capable  administrator ;  then 
relapsing  into  the  habit  of  assuming  the  mask  of  vice,  he 
was  adopted  as  Arbiter  of  Elegance  into  the  small  circle  of 
Nero's  intimate  companions ;  no  luxury  was  charming  or 
refined  till  Petronius  had  given  it  his  approval,  and  the 
jealousy  of  Tigellinus  was  roused  against  a  rival  and  master 
in  the  science  of  debauchery." 

The  novel  written  by  this  remarkable  man  was  in  the 
form  of  an  autobiography  narrating  the  adventures,  in 
various  Italian  towns,  of  a  Greek  freedman.  The  fragments 
hardly  enable  us  to  trace  any  regular  plot;  its  interest 
probably  lay  chiefly  in  the  series  of  vivid  pictures  which  it 
presented  of  life  among  all  orders  of  society  from  the 
highest  to  the  lowest,  and  its  accurate  reproduction  of 
popular  language  and  manners.  The  hero  of  the  story  uses 
the  ordinary  Latin  speech  of  educated  persons,  though, 
from  the  nature  of  the  work,  the  style  is  much  more  colloquial 
than  that  of  the  formal  prose  used  for  serious  writing.  But 
the  conversation  of  many  of  the  characters  is  in  the  plebeius 
sermo,  the  actual  speech  of  the  lower  orders,  of  which  so 
little  survives  in  literature.  It  is  full  of  solecisms  and 


184  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

popular  slang ;  and  where  the  scene  lies,  as  it  mostly  does  in 
the  extant  fragments,  in  the  semi-Greek  seaports  of  Southern 
Italy,  it  passes  into  what  was  almost  a  dialect  of  its  own, 
the  lingua  franca  of  the  Mediterranean  under  the  Empire, 
a  dialect  of  mixed  Latin  and  Greek.  The  longest  and 
most  important  fragment  is  the  well-known  Supper  of 
Trimalchio.  It  is  the  description,  full  of  brilliant  wit,  of 
a  dinner-party  given  by  a  sort  of  Golden  Dustman  and 
nis  wife,  people  of  low  birth  and  little  education,  who 
had  come  into  an  enormous  fortune.  Trimalchio,  a  figure 
drawn  with  extraordinary  life,  is  constantly  making  himself 
ridiculous  by  his  blunders  and  affectations,  while  he  almost 
wins  our  liking  by  his  childlike  simplicity  and  good  nature. 
The  dinner  itself,  and  the  conversation  on  literature  and 
art  that  goes  on  at  the  dinner-table,  are  conceived  in  a 
spirit  of  the  wildest  humour.  Trimalchio,  who  has  two 
libraries,  besides  everything  else  handsome  about  him,  is 
anxious  to  air  his  erudition.  "  Can  you  tell  us  a  story,"  he 
asks  a  guest,  "  of  the  twelve  sorrows  of  Hercules,  or  how 
the  Cyclops  pulled  Ulysses'  leg?  I  used  to  read  them  in 
Homer  when  I  was  a  boy."  After  an  interruption,  caused 
by  the  entrance  of  a  boar,  roasted  whole  and  stuffed  with 
sausages,  he  goes  on  to  talk  of  his  collection  of  plate ;  his 
unique  cups  of  Corinthian  bronze  (so  called  from  a  dealer 
named  Corinthus ;  the  metal  was  invented  by  Hannibal  at 
the  capture  of  Troy),  and  his  huge  silver  vases,  "a  hundred 
of  them,  more  or  less,"  chased  with  the  story  of  Daedalus 
shutting  Niobe  into  the  Trojan  horse,  and  Cassandra  killing 
her  sons  — "  the  dead  children  so  good,  you  would  think 
they  were  alive ;  for  I  sell  my  knowledge  in  matters  of  art 
for  no  money."  Presently  there  follow  the  two  wonderful 
ghost  stories  —  that  of  the  wer-wolf,  told  by  one  of  the  guests, 
and  that  of  the  witches  by  Trimalchio  himself  in  return  — 
both  masterpieces  of  vivid  realism.  As  the  evening  advances 
the  fun  becomes  more  fast  and  furious.  The  cook,  who 
had  excelled  himself  in  the  ingenuity  of  his  dishes,  is  called 


I.]  Petronius.  185 

up  to  take  a  seat  at  table,  and  after  favouring  the  company 
with  an  imitation  of  a  popular  tragedian,  begins  to  make 
a  book  with  Trimalchio  over  the  next  chariot  races, 
rortunata,  Trimalchio's  wife,  is  a  little  in  liquor,  and  gets 
ip  to  dance.  Just  at  this  point  Trimalchio  suddenly  turns 
sentimental,  and,  after  giving  elaborate  directions  for  his 
own  obsequies,  begins  to  cry.  The  whole  company  are  in 
tears  round  him  when  he  suddenly  rallies,  and  proposes 
that,  as  death  is  certain,  they  shall  all  go  and  have  a  hot 
bath.  In  the  little  confusion  that  follows,  the  narrator  and 
his  friend  slip  quietly  away.  This  scene  of  exquisite  fooling 
is  quite  unique  in  Greek  or  Latin  literature :  the  breadth 
and  sureness  of  touch  are  almost  Shakespearian.  Another 
fragment  relates  the  famous  story  of  the  Matron  of  Ephesus, 
one  of  the  popular  tales  which  can  be  traced  back  to  India, 
but  which  appears  here  for  the  first  time  in  the  Western 
world.  Others  deal  with  literary  criticism,  and  include 
passages  in  verse  ;  the  longest  of  these,  part  of  an  epic  on 
the  civil  wars  in  the  manner  of  Lucan,  is  recited  by  one 
of  the  principal  characters,  the  professional  poet  Eumolpus, 
to  exemplify  the  rules  he  has  laid  down  for  epic  poetry  in 
a  most  curious  discussion  that  precedes  it.  That  so  small 
a  part  of  the  novel  has  been  preserved  is  deeply  to  be 
regretted ;  it  must  have  been  comparable,  in  dramatic 
power  and  (notwithstanding  the  gross  indecency  of  many 
passages)  in  a  certain  large  sanity,  to  the  great  work  of 
Fielding.  In  all  the  refined  writing  of  the  next  age  we 
never  again  come  on  anything  at  once  so  masterly  and 
so  human. 


II. 


THE  SILVER  AGE  :    STATIUS,  THE   ELDER   PLINY,   MARTIAL, 
QUINTILIAN. 

To  the  age  of  the  rhetoricians  succeeded  the  age  of  the 
scholars.  Quintilian,  Pliny,  and  Statius,  the  three  foremost 
authors  of  the  Flavian  dynasty,  have  common  qualities  of 
great  learning  and  sober  judgment  which  give  them  a 
certain  mutual  affinity,  and  divide  them  sharply  from  their 
immediate  predecessors.  The  effort  to  outdo  the  Augustan 
writers  had  exhausted  itself;  the  new  school  rather  aimed 
at  reproducing  their  manner.  In  the  hands  of  inferior 
writers  this  attempt  only  issued  in  tame  imitations ;  but 
with  those  of  really  original  power  it  carried  the  Latin  of 
the  Silver  Age  to  a  point  higher  in  quality  than  it  ever 
reached,  except  in  the  single  case  of  Tacitus,  a  writer  of 
unique  genius  who  stands  in  a  class  of  his  own. 

The  reigns  of  the  three  Flavian  emperors  nearly  occupy 
the  last  thirty  years  of  the  first  century  after  Christ.  The 
"  year  of  four  Emperors  "  which  passed  between  the  down- 
fall of  Nero  and  the  accession  of  Vespasian  had  shaken 
the  whole  Empire  to  its  foundations.  The  recovery  from 
that  shock  left  the  Roman  world  established  on  a  new 
footing.  In  literature,  no  less  than  in  government  and 
finance,  a  feverish  period  of  inflated  credit  had  brought  it 
to  the  verge  of  ruin.  At  the  beginning  of  his  reign 
Vespasian  announced  a  deficit  of  four  hundred  million 
pounds  (a  sum  the  like  of  which  had  never  been  heard  of 

1 86 


II.]  Statius.  187 

before)  in  the  public  exchequer ;  some  similar  estimate 
might  have  been  formed  by  a  fanciful  analogy  of  the 
collapse  that  had  to  be  made  good  in  literature,  when  style 
could  no  longer  bear  the  tremendous  overdrafts  made  on 
it  by  Seneca  and  Lucan.  And  in  the  literary  as  in  the 
political  world  there  was  no  complete  recovery  :  throughout 
the  second  century  we  have  to  trace  the  gradual  decline  of 
letters  going  on  alongside  of  that  mysterious  decay  of  the 
Empire  itself  before  which  a  continuously  admirable  govern- 
ment was  all  but  helpless. 

Publius  Papinius  Statius,  the  most  eminent  of  the  poets 
of  this  age,  was  born  towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of 
Tiberius,  and  seems  to  have  died  before  the  accession  of 
Nerva.  His  poetry  can  all  be  assigned  to  the  reign  of  Domi- 
tian,  or  the  few  years  immediately  preceding  it.  As  to  his 
life  little  is  known,  probably  because  it  passed  without 
much  incident.  He  was  born  at  Naples,  and  returned  to 
it  in  advanced  age  after  the  completion  of  his  Thebaid ; 
but  the  greater  part  of  his  life  was  spent  at  Rome,  where 
his  father  was  a  grammarian  of  some  distinction  who  had 
acted  for  a  time  as  tutor  to  Domitian.  He  had  thus  access 
to  the  court,  where  he  improved  his  opportunities  by  un- 
stinted adulation  of  the  Emperor  and  his  favourite  eunuch 
Earinus.  The  curious  mediaeval  tradition  of  his  conversion 
to  Christianity,  which  is  so  finely  used  by  Dante  in  the 
Purgatorio,  cannot  be  traced  to  its  origin,  and  does  not 
appear  to  have  any  historical  foundation. 

Twelve  years  were  spent  by  Statius  over  his  epic  poem 
on  the  War  of  Thebes,  which  was  published  about  the  year 
92,  with  a  florid  dedication  to  Domitian.  After  its  com- 
pletion he  began  another  epic,  on  an  even  more  imposing 
scale,  on  the  life  of  Achilles  and  the  whole  of  the  Trojan 
war.  Of  this  Achilleid  only  the  first  and  part  of  the 
second  book  were  ever  completed ;  had  it  continued  on 
the  same  scale  it  would  have  been  the  longest  of  Greek  or 
Latin  epics.  At  various  times  after  the  publication  of  the 


1 88  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

Thebaid  appeared  the  five  books  of  Silvae,  miscellaneous 
and  occasional  poems  on  different  subjects,  often  of  a 
personal  nature.  Another  epic,  on  the  campaign  of  Domi- 
tian  in  Germany,  has  not  been  preserved. 

The  Thebaid  became  very  famous ;  later  poets,  like 
Ausonius  or  Claudian,  constantly  imitate  it.  Its  smooth 
versification,  copious  diction,  and  sustained  elegance  made 
it  a  sort  of  canon  of  poetical  technique.  But,  itself,  it  rises 
beyond  the  merely  mechanical  level.  Without  any  quality 
that  can  quite  be  called  genius,  Statius  had  real  poetical 
feeling.  His  taste  preserves  him  from  any  great  extrava- 
gances ;  and  among  much  tedious  rhetoric  and  cumbrous 
mythology,  there  is  enough  of  imagination  and  pathos  to 
make  the  poem  interesting  and  even  charming.  At  a  time 
when  Guercino  and  the  Caracci  were  counted  great  masters 
in  the  sister  art,  the  Thebaid  was  also  held  to  be  a  master- 
piece. Besides  complete  versions  by  inferior  hands,  both 
Pope  and  Gray  took  the  pains  to  translate  portions  of  it 
into  English  verse,  and  it  is  perpetually  quoted  in  the 
literature  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is,  indeed,  perhaps 
its  severest  condemnation  that  it  reads  best  in  quotations. 
Not  only  the  more  highly  elaborated  passages,  but  almost 
any  passage  taken  at  random,  may  be  read  with  pleasure 
and  admiration ;  those  who  have  had  the  patience  to  read 
it  through,  however  much  they  may  respect  the  continuous 
excellence  of  its  workmanship,  will  (as  with  the  Gierusa- 
lemme  Liberata  of  Tasso)  feel  nearly  as  much  respect  for 
their  own  achievement  as  for  that  of  the  poet. 

The  Silvae,  consisting  as  they  do  of  comparatively  short 
pieces,  display  the  excellences  of  Statius  to  greater  advan- 
tage. Of  the  thirty-two  poems,  six  are  in  lyric  metres, 
the  rest  being  all  written  in  the  smooth  graceful  hexameters 
of  which  the  author  of  the  Thebaid  was  so  accomplished 
a  master.  The  subjects,  for  the  most  part  of  a  familiar 
nature,  are  very  various.  A  touching  and  affectionate  poem 
to  his  wife  Claudia  is  one  of  the  best  known.  Several 


II.]  Statins.  189 

are  on  the  death  of  friends ;  one  of  very  great  beauty  is 
on  the  marriage  of  his  brother  poet,  Arruntius  Stella,  to  a 
lady  with  the  beautiful  name  of  Violantilla.  The  descriptive 
pieces  on  the  villas  of  acquaintances  at  Tivoli  and  Sorrento, 
and  on  the  garden  of  another  in  Rome,  are  full  of  a  genuine 
feeling  for  natural  beauty.  The  poem  on  the  death  of 
his  father,  though  it  has  passages  of  romantic  fancy,  is 
deformed  by  an  excess  of  literary  allusions ;  but  that  on 
the  death  of  his  adopted  son  (he  had  no  children  of  his 
own),  which  ends  the  collection,  is  very  touching  in  the 
sincerity  of  its  grief  and  its  reminiscences  of  the  dead  boy's 
infancy.  Perhaps  the  finest,  certainly  the  most  remarkable 
of  all  these  pieces  is  the  short  poem  (one  might  almost  call 
it  a  sonnet)  addressed  to  Sleep.  This,  though  included  in 
the  last  book  of  the  Silvae,  must  have  been  written  in 
earlier  life ;  it  shows  that  had  Statius  not  been  entangled 
in  the  composition  of  epics  by  the  conventional  taste  of  his 
age,  he  might  have  struck  out  a  new  manner  in  ancient 
poetry.  The  poem  is  so  brief  that  it  may  be  quoted  in 
full:  — 

Crimine  quo  merui  iuvenis,  placidissimc  divom, 
Quove  errore  miser,  donis  ut  solus  egerem, 
Somne,  tuis  ?     Tacet  omne  pecus,  volueresque,fcraeque, 
Et  simulant fes sos  curvata  cacumina  somnos  ; 
Nee  trucibus  fluviis  idem  sonus  ;  occidit  horror 
Aequoris,  et  terris  maria  inclinata  quiescunt. 
Septima  iam  rediens  Phoebe  mihi  respicit  aegras 
Stare  genas,  totidem  Oeteae  Paphiaeque  revisunt 
Lampades,  et  toties  nostros  Tithonia  questus 
Praeterit  et gelido  spargit  miserata  flagello. 
Unde  ego  suffidam  ?     Non  si  mihi  lumina  mille 
Quae  sacer  alterna  tantum  statione  tenebat 
Argus,  et  haud  unquam  vigilabat  corpore  toto. 
At  nunc,  heu,  aliquis  longa  sub  nocte  puellae 
Brachia  nexa  tenens,  ultra  te,  Somne,  repeltit: 


190  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

Inde  veni :  nee  te  totas  infundere  pennas 
Luminibus  compello  meis :  hoc  turba  precatur 
Laetior ;  extremae  me  tange  cacumine  virgae, 
Suffidt,  aut  leviter  suspense  poplite  transi. 

Were  the  three  lines  beginning  Unde  ego  suffidam  struck 
out  —  and  one  might  almost  fancy  them  to  have  been  in- 
serted later  by  an  unhappy  second  thought  —  the  remainder 
of  this  poem  would  be  as  perfect  as  it  is  unique.  The 
famous  sonnet  of  Wordsworth  on  the  same  subject  must 
at  once  occur  to  an  English  reader;  but  the  poem  in  its 
manner,  especially  in  the  dying  cadence  of  the  last  two 
lines,  recalls  even  more  strongly  some  of  the  finest  sonnets 
of  Keats.  "  Had  Statius  written  often  thus,"  in  the  words 
Johnson  uses  of  Gray,  "it  had  been  vain  to  blame,  and 
useless  to  praise  him." 

The  two  other  epic  poets  contemporary  with  Statius 
whose  works  are  extant,  Valerius  Flaccus  and  Silius  Italicus, 
belong  generally  to  the  same  school,  but  stand  on  a  much 
lower  level  of  excellence.  The  former  is  only  known  as 
the  author  of  the  Argonautica.  An  allusion  in  the  proem 
of  his  epic  to  the  recent  destruction  of  Jerusalem  by  Titus 
in  the  year  70,  and  another  in  a  later  book  to  the  great 
eruption  of  Vesuvius  in  79,  fix  the  date  of  the  poem ;  and 
Quintilian,  writing  in  the  later  years  of  Domitian,  refers  to 
the  poet's  recent  death.  From  another  passage  in  the 
Argonautica  it  has  been  inferred  that  Flaccus  was  one  of 
the  college  of  quindecemvirs,  and  therefore  of  high  family. 
The  Argonautica  follows  the  well-known  poem  of  Apollonius 
Rhodius,  but  by  his  diffuse  rhetorical  treatment  the  author 
expands  the  story  to  such  a  length  that  in  between  five  and 
six  thousand  lines  he  has  only  got  as  far  as  the  escape  of 
Jason  and  Medea  from  Colchos.  Here  the  poem  breaks 
off  abruptly  in  the  eighth  book ;  it  was  probably  meant  to 
consist  of  twelve,  and  to  end  with  the  return  of  the  Argo- 
nauts to  Greece.  In  all  respects,  except  the  choice  of 


II.]  Silius  Italicus.  191 

subject,  Valerius  Flaccus  is  far  inferior  to  Statius.  He 
cannot  indeed  wholly  destroy  the  perennial  charm  of  the 
story  of  the  Golden  Fleece,  but  he  comes  as  near  doing  so 
as  is  reasonably  possible.  His  versification  is  correct,  but 
without  freedom  or  variety;  and  incidents  and  persons 
are  alike  presented  through  a  cloud  of  monotonous  and 
mechanical  rhetoric. 

If  Valerius  Flaccus  to  some  degree  redeemed  his  imagi- 
native poverty  by  the  choice  of  his  subject,  the  other  epic 
poet  of  the  Flavian  era,  Tiberius  Catius  Silius  Italicus, 
chose  a  subject  which  no  ingenuity  could  have  adapted  to 
epic  treatment.  His  Punic  War  may  fairly  contend  for 
the  distinction  of  being  the  worst  epic  ever  written ;  and 
its  author  is  the  most  striking  example  in  Latin  literature 
of  the  incorrigible  amateur.  He  had,  in  earlier  life,  passed 
through  a  distinguished  official  career;  he  was  consul  the 
year  before  the  fall  of  Nero,  and  in  the  political  revolutions 
which  followed  conducted  himself  with  such  prudence  that, 
through  an  intimate  friend  of  Vitellius,  he  remained  in 
favour  under  Vespasian.  After  a  term  of  further  service  as 
proconsul  of  Asia,  he  retired  to  a  dignified  and  easy  leisure. 
His  love  of  literature  was  sincere ;  he  prided  himself  on 
owning  one  of  Cicero's  villas,  and  the  land  which  held 
Virgil's  grave,  and  he  was  a  generous  patron  to  men  of 
letters.  The  fulsome  compliments  paid  to  him  by  Martial 
<who  has  the  effrontery  to  speak  of  him  as  a  combined 
Virgil  and  Cicero)  are,  no  doubt,  only  an  average  specimen 
of  the  atmosphere  which  surrounded  so  munificent  a  patron  ; 
but  the  admiration  which  he  openly  expressed  for  the  slave 
Epictetus  does  him  a  truer  honour.  The  Bellum  Punicum, 
in  seventeen  books,  is  longer  than  the  Odyssey.  It  closely 
follows  the  history  as  told  by  Livy;  but  the  elements  of 
almost  epic  grandeur  in  the  contest  between  Rome  and 
Hannibal  all  disappear  amid  masses  of  tedious  machinery. 
Without  any  invention  or  constructive  power  of  his  own, 
Silius  copies  with  tasteless  pedantry  all  the  outworn  traditions 


192  Latin  Literature.  [HI 

of  the  heroic  epic.  What  Homer  or  Virgil  has  done,  he 
must  needs  do  too.  The  Romans  are  the  Dardanians  or 
the  Aeneadae  :  Juno  interferes  in  Hannibal's  favour,  and 
Venus,  hidden  in  a  cloud,  watches  the  battle  of  the  Trebia 
from  a  hill.  Hannibal  is  urged  to  war  by  a  dream  like  that 
of  Agamemnon  in  the  Iliad ;  he  is  equipped  with  a  spear 
"  fatal  to  many  thousands  "  of  the  enemy,  and  a  shield,  like 
that  of  Aeneas,  embossed  with  subjects  from  Carthaginian 
history,  and  with  the  river  Ebro  flowing  round  the  edge 
as  an  ingenious  variant  of  the  Ocean-river  on  the  shield 
of  Achilles.  A  Carthaginian  fleet  cruising  off"  the  coast  of 
Italy  falls  in  with  Proteus,  who  takes  the  opportunity  of 
prophesying  the  course  of  the  war.  Hannibal  at  Zama 
pursues  a  phantom  of  Scipio,  which  flies  before  him  and 
disappears  like  that  of  Aeneas  before  Turnus.  Such  was 
the  degradation  to  which  the  noble  epic  machinery  had 
now  sunk.  Soon  after  the  death  of  Silius  the  poem  seems 
to  have  fallen  into  merited  oblivion ;  there  is  a  single 
reference  to  it  in  a  poet  of  the  fifth  century,  and  thereafter 
it  remained  unknown  or  unheard  of  until  a  manuscript 
discovered  by  Poggio  Bracciolini  brought  it  to  light  again 
early  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

The  works  of  the  other  Flavian  poets,  Curiatius  Maternus, 
Saleius  Bassus,  Arruntius  Stella,  and  the  poetess  Sulpicia, 
are  lost ;  all  else  that  survives  of  the  verse  of  the  period 
is  the  work  of  a  writer  of  a  different  order,  but  of  consider- 
able importance  and  value,  the  epigrammatist  Martial.  By 
no  means  a  poet  of  the  first  rank,  hardly  perhaps  a  poet 
at  all  according  to  any  strict  definition,  he  has  yet  a  genius 
of  his  own  which  for  many  ages  made  him  the  chief  and 
almost  the  sole  model  for  a  particular  kind  of  literature. 

Marcus  Valerius  Martialis  was  born  at  Augusta  Bilbilis 
in  Central  Spain  towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Tiberius. 
He  came  to  Rome  as  a  young  man  during  the  reign  of 
Nero,  when  his  countrymen,  Seneca  and  Lucan,  were  at 
the  height  of  their  reputation.  Through  their  patronage 


II.]  Martial.  193 

he  obtained  a  footing,  if  not  at  court,  yet  among  the 
wealthy  amateurs  who  extended  a  less  dangerous  protection 
to  men  of  letters.  For  some  thirty-five  years  he  led  the 
life  of  a  dependant ;  under  Domitian  his  assiduous  flattery 
gained  for  him  the  honorary  tribunate  which  conferred 
equestrian  rank,  though  not  the  rewards  of  hard  cash  which 
he  would  probably  have  appreciated  more.  The  younger 
Pliny,  who  speaks  of  him  with  a  slightly  supercilious 
approval,  repaid  with  a  more  substantial  gratification  a 
poem  comparing  him  to  Cicero.  Martial's  gift  for  occasional 
verse  just  enabled  him  to  live  up  three  pair  of  stairs  in  the 
city ;  in  later  years,  when  he  had  an  income  from  booksellers 
as  well  as  from  private  patrons,  he  could  afford  a  tiny 
country  house  among  the  Sabine  hills.  Early  in  the  reign 
of  Domitian  he  began  to  publish  regularly,  bringing  out  a 
volume  of  epigrams  every  year.  After  the  accession  of 
Trajan  he  returned  to  his  native  town,  from  which, 
however,  he  continued  to  send  fresh  volumes  of  epigrams 
to  his  Roman  publishers.  There  his  talent  for  flattery  at 
last  bore  substantial  fruit ;  a  rich  lady  of  the  neighbourhood 
presented  him  with  a  little  estate,  and  though  the  longing 
for  the  country,  which  had  grown  on  him  in  Rome,  was 
soon  replaced  by  a  stronger  feeling  of  regret  for  the 
excitement  of  the  capital,  he  spent  the  remainder  of  his  life 
in  material  comfort. 

The  collected  works  of  Martial,  as  published  after  his 
death,  which  probably  took  place  about  the  year  102, 
consist  of  twelve  books  of  miscellaneous  Epigrams,  which 
are  prefaced  by  a  book  of  pieces  called  Liber  Spectaculorum, 
upon  the  performances  given  by  Titus  and  Domitian  in  the 
capital,  especially  in  the  vast  amphitheatre  erected  by  the 
former.  At  the  end  are  added  two  books  of  Xenia  and 
Apophoreta,  distichs  written  to  go  with  the  Christmas  presents 
of  all  sorts  which  were  interchanged  at  the  festival  of  the 
Saturnalia.  These  last  are,  of  course,  not  "distinguished  for 
a  strong  poetic  feeling,"  any  more  than  the  cracker  mottoes 
o 


194  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

of  modern  times.  But  the  twelve  books  of  Epigrams,  while 
they  include  work  of  all  degrees  of  goodness  and  badness, 
are  invaluable  from  the  vivid  picture  which  they  give  of 
actual  daily  life  at  Rome  in  the  first  century.  Few  writers 
of  equal  ability  show  in  their  work  such  a  total  absence  of 
character,  such  indifference  to  all  ideas  or  enthusiasms ; 
yet  this  very  quality  makes  the  verse  of  Martial  a  more 
perfect  mirror  of  the  external  aspects  of  Roman  life.  A 
certain  intolerance  of  hypocrisy  is  the  nearest  approach 
Martial  ever  makes  to  moral  feeling.  His  perpetual  flattery 
of  Domitian,  though  gross  as  a  mountain  —  it  generally  takes 
the  form  of  comparing  him  with  the  Supreme  Being,  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  latter  —  has  no  more  serious  political 
import  than  there  is  serious  moral  import  in  the  almost 
unexampled  indecency  of  a  large  proportion  of  the  epigrams. 
The  "  candour "  noted  in  him  by  Pliny  is  simply  that  of 
a  sheet  of  paper  which  is  indifferent  to  what  is  written  upon 
it,  fair  or  foul.  He  may  claim  the  merit  —  nor  is  it  an 
inconsiderable  one  —  of  being  totally  free  from  pretence. 
In  one  of  the  most  graceful  of  his  poems,  he  enumerates 
to  a  friend  the  things  which  make  up  a  happy  life :  "  Be 
yourself,  and  do  not  wish  to  be  something  else,"  is  the  line 
which  sums  up  his  counsel.  To  his  own  work  he  extends 
the  same  easy  tolerance  with  which  he  views  the  follies  and 
vices  of  society.  "  A  few  good,  some  indifferent,  the  greater 
number  bad  "  —  so  he  describes  his  epigrams ;  what  opening 
is  left  after  this  for  hostile  criticism  ?  If  elsewhere  he  hints 
that  only  indolence  prevented  him  from  producing  more 
important  work,  so  harmless  an  affectation  may  be  passed 
over  in  a  writer  whose  clearness  of  observation  and  mastery 
of  slight  but  lifelike  portraiture  are  really  of  a  high  order. 

By  one  of  the  curious  accidents  of  literary  history 
Martial,  as  the  only  Latin  epigrammatist  who  left  a  large 
mass  of  work,  gave  a  meaning  to  the  word  epigram  from 
which  it  is  only  now  beginning  to  recover.  The  art, 
practised  with  such  infinite  grace  by  Greek  artists  of  almost 


II.]  The  Elder  Pliny.  195 

every  age  between  Solon  and  Justinian,  was  just  at  this 
period  sunk  to  a  low  ebb.  The  contemporary  Greek 
epigrammatists  whose  work  is  preserved  in  the  Palatine 
Anthology,  from  Nicarchus  and  Lucilius  to  Strato,  all  show 
the  same  heaviness  of  handling  and  the  same  tiresome 
insistence  on  making  a  point,  which  prevent  Martial's 
epigrams  from  being  placed  in  the  first  rank.  But  while  in 
any  collection  of  Greek  epigrammatic  poetry  these  authors 
naturally  sink  to  their  own  place,  Martial,  as  well  by  the 
mere  mass  of  his  work  —  some  twelve  hundred  pieces  in  all, 
exclusive  of  the  cracker  mottoes  —  as  by  his  animation  and 
pungent  wit,  set  a  narrow  and  rather  disastrous  type  for 
later  literature.  He  appealed  strongly  to  all  that  was  worst 
in  Roman  taste  —  its  heavy-handedness,  its  admiration  of 
verbal  cleverness,  its  tendency  towards  brutality.  Half  a 
century  later,  Verus  Caesar,  that  wretched  creature  whom 
Hadrian  had  adopted  as  his  successor,  and  whose  fortunate 
death  left  the  Empire  to  the  noble  rule  of  Antoninus  Pius, 
called  Martial  "  his  Virgil :  "  the  incident  is  highly  significant 
of  the  corruption  of  taste  which  in  the  course  of  the  second 
century  concurred  with  other  causes  to  bring  Latin  literature 
to  decay  and  almost  to  extinction. 

Among  the  learned  Romans  of  this  age  of  great  learning, 
the  elder  Pliny,  details  suae  doctissimus,  easily  took  the  first 
place.  Born  in  the  middle  of  the  reign  of  Tiberius,  Gaius 
Plinius  Secundus  of  Comum  passed  his  life  in  high  public 
employments,  both  military  and  civil,  which  took  him 
successively  over  nearly  all  the  provinces  of  the  Empire. 
He  served  in  Germany,  in  the  Danubian  provinces,  in 
Spain,  in  Gaul,  in  Africa,  and  probably  also  in  Syria,  on 
the  staff  of  Titus,  during  the  Jewish  war.  In  August  of 
the  year  79  he  was  in  command  of  the  fleet  stationed  at 
Misenum  when  the  memorable  eruption  of  Vesuvius  took 
place.  In  his  zeal  for  scientific  investigation  he  set  sail  for 
the  spot  in  a  man-of-war,  and,  lingering  too  near  the  zone 
of  the  eruption,  was  suffocated  by  the  rain  of  hot  ashes. 


196  Latin  Literature.  [ll\ 

The  account  of  his  death,  given  by  his  nephew  in  a  letter 
to  the  historian  Tacitus,  is  one  of  the  best  known  passages 
in  the  classics. 

By  amazing  industry  and  a  most  rigid  economy  of  time, 
Pliny  combined  with  his  continuous  official  duties  an 
immense  reading  and  a  literary  production  of  great  scope 
and  value.  A  hundred  and  sixty  volumes  of  his  extracts 
from  writers  of  all  kinds,  written,  we  are  told,  on  both  sides 
of  the  paper  in  an  extremely  small  hand,  were  bequeathed 
by  him  to  his  nephew.  Besides  works  on  grammar,  rhetoric, 
military  tactics,  and  other  subjects,  he  wrote  two  important 
histories  —  one,  in  twenty  books,  on  the  wars  on  the  German 
frontier,  the  other  a  general  history  of  Rome  in  thirty-one 
books,  from  the  accession  of  Nero  to  the  joint  triumph  of 
Vespasian  and  Titus  after  the  subjugation  of  the  Jewish 
revolt.  Both  these  valuable  works  are  completely  lost, 
nor  is  it  possible  to  determine  how  far  their  substance 
reappears  in  Tacitus  and  Suetonius ;  the  former,  however, 
in  both  Annals  and  Histories,  repeatedly  cites  him  as  an 
authority.  But  we  fortunately  possess  the  most  important 
of  his  works,  the  thirty-seven  books  of  his  Natural  History. 
This  is  not,  indeed,  a  great  work  of  literature,  though  its 
style,  while  sometimes  heavy  and  sometimes  mannered,  is 
on  the  whole  plain,  straightforward,  and  unpretentious ; 
but  it  is  a  priceless  storehouse  of  information  on  every 
branch  of  natural  science  as  known  to  the  ancient  world. 
It  was  published  with  a  dedication  to  Titus  two  years  before 
Pliny's  death,  but  continued  during  the  rest  of  his  life  to 
receive  his  additions  and  corrections.  It  was  compiled 
from  a  vast  reading.  Nearly  five  hundred  authors  (about 
a  hundred  and  fifty  Roman,  the  rest  foreign)  are  cited  in 
his  catalogue  of  authorities.  The  plan  of  this  great 
encyclopedia  was  carefully  thought  out  before  its  composition 
was  begun.  It  opens  with  a  general  system  of  physiography, 
and  then  passes  successively  to  geography,  anthropology, 
human  physiology,  zoology  and  comparative  physiology, 


II.'J  The  Elder  Pliny.  197 

botany,  including  agriculture  and  horticulture,  medicine, 
mineralogy,  and  the  fine  arts. 

After  being  long  held  as  an  almost  infallible  authority, 
Pliny,  in  more  recent  times,  fell  under  the  reproach  of 
credulity  and  want  of  sufficient  discrimination  in  the  value 
of  his  sources.  Further  research  has  gone  far  to  reinstate 
his  reputation.  Without  having  any  profound  original 
knowledge  of  the  particular  sciences,  he  had  a  naturally 
scientific  mind.  His  tendency  to  give  what  is  merely 
curious  the  same  attention  as  what  is  essentially  important, 
has  incidentally  preserved  much  valuable  detail,  especially 
as  regards  the  arts ;  and  modern  research  often  tends  to 
confirm  the  anecdotes  which  were  once  condemned  as 
plainly  erroneous  and  even  absurd.  Pliny  has,  further,  the 
great  advantage  of  being  shut  up  in  no  philosophical 
system.  His  philosophy  of  life,  and  his  religion  so  far  as 
it  appears,  is  that  of  his  age,  a  moderate  and  rational 
Stoicism.  Like  his  contemporaries,  he  complains  of  the 
modern  falling  away  from  nature  and  the  decay  of  morals. 
But  it  is  as  the  conscientious  student  and  the  candid 
observer  that  he  habitually  appears.  In  diligence,  accuracy, 
and  freedom  from  preconception  or  prejudice,  he  represents 
the  highest  level  reached  by  ancient  science  after  Aristotle 
and  his  immediate  successors. 

Of  the  more  specialised  scientific  treatises  belonging  to 
this  period,  only  two  are  extant,  the  three  books  on  Strategy 
by  Sextus  Julius  Frontinus,  and  a  treatise  by  the  same 
author  on  the  public  water-supply  of  Rome ;  both  belong 
to  strict  science,  rather  than  to  literature.  The  schools  of 
rhetoric  and  grammar  continued  to  flourish :  among  many 
unimportant  names  that  of  Quintilian  stands  eminent,  as 
not  only  a  grammarian  and  rhetorician,  but  a  fine  critic 
and  a  writer  of  high  substantive  value. 

Marcus  Fabius  Quintilianus  of  Calagurris,  a  small  town 
on  the  Upper  Ebro,  is  the  last,  and  perhaps  the  most  dis- 
tinguished of  that  school  of  Spanish  writers  which  bulks 


198  Latin  Literature.  [111. 

so  largely  in  the  history  of  the  first  century.  He  was 
educated  at  Rome,  and  afterwards  returned  to  his  native 
town  as  a  teacher  of  rhetoric.  There  he  made,  or  improved, 
the  acquaintance  of  Servius  Sulpicius  Galba,  proconsul  of 
Tarraconensian  Spain  in  the  later  years  of  Nero.  When 
Galba  was  declared  Emperor  by  the  senate,  he  took 
Quintilian  with  him  to  Rome.  There  he  was  appointed 
a  public  teacher  of  rhetoric,  with  a  salary  from  the  privy 
purse.  He  retained  his  fame  and  his  favour  through  the 
succeeding  reigns.  Domitian  made  him  tutor  to  the  two 
grand-nephews  whom  he  destined  for  his  own  successors, 
and  raised  him  to  consular  rank.  For  about  twenty  years 
he  remained  the  most  celebrated  teacher  in  the  capital, 
combining  his  professorship  with  a  large  amount  of  actual 
pleading  in  the  law-courts.  His  published  works  belong 
to  the  later  years  of  his  life,  when  he  had  retired  from  the 
bar  and  from  public  teaching.  His  first  important  treatise, 
on  the  decay  of  oratory,  De  Cattsis  Corruptae  Eloquentiae, 
is  not  extant.  It  was  followed,  a  few  years  later,  in  or 
about  the  year  93,  by  his  great  work,  the  Institutio  Oratorio., 
which  sums  up  the  teaching  and  criticism  of  his  life. 

The  contents  of  this  work,  which  at  once  became  the 
final  and  standard  treatise  on  the  theory  and  practice  of 
Latin  oratory,  are  very  elaborate  and  complete.  In  the 
first  book,  Quintilian  discusses  the  preliminary  training 
required  before  the  pupil  is  ready  to  enter  on  the  study  of 
his  art,  beginning  with  a  sketch  of  the  elementary  education 
of  the  child  from  the  time  he  leaves  the  nursery,  which  is 
even  now  of  remarkable  interest.  The  second  book  deals 
with  the  general  principles  and  scope  of  the  art  of  oratory, 
and  continues  the  discussion  of  the  aims  and  methods  of 
education  in  its  later  stages.  The  five  books  from  the 
third  to  the  seventh  are  occupied  with  an  exhaustive 
treatment  of  the  matter  of  oratory,  under  the  heads  of  what 
were  known  to  the  Roman  schools  by  the  names  of  invention 
and  disposition.  The  greater  part  of  these  books  is,  of 


II.]  Quintilian.  199 

course,  highly  technical.  The  next  four  books,  from  the 
eighth  to  the  eleventh,  treat  of  the  manner  of  oratory,  or 
all  that  is  included  in  the  word  style  in  its  widest  significa- 
tion. It  is  in  this  part  of  the  treatise  that  Quintilian,  in 
relation  to  the  course  of  general  reading  both  in  Greek  and 
Latin  that  should  be  pursued  by  the  young  orator,  gives 
the  masterly  sketch  of  Latin  literature  which  is  the  most 
famous  portion  of  the  whole  work.  The  twelfth  book, 
which  concludes  the  work,  reverts  to  education  in  the 
highest  and  most  extended  sense,  that  of  the  moral  quali- 
fications of  the  great  orator,  and  the  exhaustive  discipline 
of  the  whole  nature  throughout  life  which  must  be  con- 
tinued unfalteringly  to  the  end. 

Now  that  the  formal  study  of  rhetoric  has  ceased  to  be 
a  part  of  the  higher  education,  the  more  strictly  technical 
parts  of  Quintilian's  work,  like  those  of  the  Rhetoric  of 
Aristotle,  have,  in  a  great  measure,  lost  their  relevance  to 
actual  life,  and  with  it  their  general  interest  to  the  world 
at  large.  Both  the  Greek  and  the  Roman  masterpiece  are 
read  now  rather  for  their  incidental  observations  upon 
human  nature  and  the  fundamental  principles  of  art,  than 
for  instruction  in  a  particular  form  of  art  which,  in  the 
course  of  time,  has  become  obsolete.  These  observations, 
in  Quintilian  no  less  than  in  Aristotle,  are  often  both 
luminous  and  profound.  A  collection  of  the  memorable 
sentences  of  Quintilian,  such  as  has  been  made  by  his 
modern  editors,  is  full  of  sayings  of  deep  wisdom  and 
enduring  value.  Nulla  mansit  ars  qualis  inventa  est,  nee 
intra  initium  stetit ;  Plerumque  facilius  est  plus  facere,  quam 
idem  ;  Nihil  in  studiis  parvum  est;  Cito  scribendo  nonfit  ut 
bene  scribatur,  bene  scribendo  fit  ut  cito  ;  Omnia  nostra  dutn 
nascuntur placent,  alioqui  nee  scriberentur ; — such  sayings  as 
these,  expressed  with  admirable  terseness  and  lucidity,  are 
scattered  all  over  the  work,  and  have  a  value  far  beyond 
the  limits  of  any  single  study.  If  they  do  not  drop  from 
Quintilian  with  the  same  curious  negligence  as  they  do 


20O  Latin  Literature.  [Ill 

from  Aristotle  (whose  best  things  are  nearly  always  said  in 
a  parenthesis),  the  advantage  is  not  wholly  with  the  Greek 
author;  the  more  orderly  and  finished  method  of  the 
Roman  teacher  marks  a  higher  constructive  literary  power 
than  that  of  Aristotle,  whose  singular  genius  made  him 
indeed  the  prince  of  lecturers,  but  did  not  place  him  in  the 
first  rank  of  writers. 

Beyond  these  incidental  touches  of  wisdom  and  insight, 
which  give  an  enduring  value  to  the  whole  substance  of  the 
work,  the  chief  interest  for  modern  readers  in  the  Institutio 
Oratoria  lies  in  three  portions  which  are,  more  or  less, 
episodic  to  the  strict  purpose  of  the  book,  though  they  sum 
up  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  written.  These  are  the  dis- 
cussions on  the  education  of  children  in  the  first,  and  on 
the  larger  education  of  mature  life  in  the  last  book,  and  the 
critical  sketch  of  ancient  literature  up  to  his  own  time, 
which  occupies  the  first  chapter  of  the  tenth.  Almost  for 
the  first  time  in  history  —  for  the  ideal  system  of  Plato, 
however  brilliant  and  suggestive,  stands  on  quite  a  different 
footing  —  the  theory  of  education  was,  in  this  age,  made  a 
subject  of  profound  thought  and  study.  The  precepts  of 
Quintilian,  if  taken  in  detail,  address  themselves  to  the 
formation  of  a  Roman  of  the  Empire,  and  not  a  citizen  of 
modern  Europe.  But  their  main  spirit  is  independent 
of  the  accidents  of  any  age  or  country.  In  the  breadth  of 
his  ideas,  and  in  the  wisdom  of  much  of  his  detailed 
advice,  Quintilian  takes  a  place  in  the  foremost  rank  of 
educational  writers.  The  dialogue  on  oratory  written  a 
few  years  earlier  by  Tacitus  names,  as  the  main  cause  of 
the  decay  of  the  liberal  arts,  not  any  lack  of  substantial 
encouragement,  but  the  negligence  of  parents  and  the  want 
of  skill  in  teachers.  To  leave  off  vague  and  easy  declama- 
tions against  luxury  and  the  decay  of  morals,  and  to  fix  on 
the  great  truth  that  bad  education  is  responsible  for  bad 
life,  was  the  first  step  towards  a  real  reform.  This  Quin- 
tilian insists  upon  with  admirable  clearness.  Nor  has  any 


II.]  Quintilian.  201 

writer  on  education  grasped  more  firmly  or  expressed  more 
lucidly  the  complementary  truth  that  education,  from  the 
cradle  upwards,  is  something  which  acts  on  the  whole 
intellectual  and  moral  nature,  and  whose  object  is  the  pro- 
duction of  what  the  Romans  called,  in  a  simple  form  of 
words  which  was  full  of  meaning,  "the  good  man."  It 
would  pass  beyond  the  province  of  literary  criticism  to 
discuss  the  reasons  why  that  reform  never  took  place,  or,  if 
it  did,  was  confined  to  a  circle  too  small  to  influence  the 
downward  movement  of  the  Empire  at  large.  They  belong 
to  a  subject  which  is  among  the  most  interesting  of  all 
studies,  and  which  has  hardly  yet  been  studied  with  ade- 
quate fulness  or  insight,  the  social  history  of  the  Roman 
world  in  the  second  century. 

One  necessary  part  of  the  education  of  the  orator  was 
a  course  of  wide  and  careful  reading  in  the  best  literature ; 
and  it  is  in  this  special  connection  that  Quintilian  devotes 
part  of  his  elaborate  discussion  on  style  to  a  brief  critical 
summary  of  the  literature  of  Greece  and  that  of  his  own 
country.  The  frequent  citations  which  have  already  been 
made  from  this  part  of  the  work  may  indicate  the  very 
great  ability  with  which  it  is  executed.  Though  his  special 
purpose  as  a  professor  of  rhetoric  is  always  kept  in  view, 
his  criticism  passes  beyond  this  formal  limit.  He  expresses, 
no  doubt,  what  was  the  general  opinion  of  the  educated 
world  of  his  own  time ;  but  the  form  of  his  criticism  is  so 
careful  and  so  choice,  that  many  of  his  brief  phrases  have 
remained  the  final  word  on  the  authors,  both  in  prose  and 
verse,  whom  he  mentions  in  his  rapid  survey.  His  catalogue 
is  far  from  being,  as  it  has  been  disparagingly  called,  a  mere 
"list  of  the  best  hundred  books."  It  is  the  deliberate 
judgment  of  the  best  Roman  scholarship,  in  an  age  of  wide 
reading  and  great  learning,  upon  the  masterpieces  of  their 
own  literature.  His  own  preference  for  certain  periods  and 
certain  manners  is  well  marked.  But  he  never  forgets  that 
the  object  of  criticism  is  to  disengage  excellences  rather 


2O2  Latin  Literature.  [Ill 

than  to  censure  faults :  even  his  pronounced  aversion  from 
the  style  of  Seneca  and  the  authors  of  the  Neronian  age 
does  not  prevent  him  from  seeing  their  merits,  and  giving 
these  ungrudging  praise. 

It  is,  indeed,  in  Quintilian  that  the  reaction  from  the  early 
imperial  manner  comes  to  its  climax.  Statius  had,  to  a 
certain  degree,  gone  back  to  Virgil ;  Quintilian  goes  back 
to  Cicero  without  hesitation  or  reserve.  He  is  the  first  of 
the  Ciceronians ;  Lactantius  in  the  fourth  century,  John 
of  Salisbury  in  the  twelfth,  Petrarch  in  the  fourteenth, 
Erasmus  in  the  sixteenth,  all  in  a  way  continue  the  tradition 
which  he  founded ;  nor  is  it  surprising  that  the  discovery 
of  a  complete  manuscript  of  the  Institutio  Oratoria  early 
in  the  fifteenth  century  was  hailed  by  scholars  as  one  of 
the  most  important  events  of  the  Renaissance.  He  is  not, 
however,  a  mere  imitator  of  his  master's  style ;  indeed,  his 
style  is,  in  some  features  and  for  some  purposes,  a  better 
one  than  his  master's.  It  is  as  clear  and  fluent,  and  not 
so  verbose.  He  cannot  rise  to  the  great  heights  of  Cicero ; 
but  for  ordinary  use  it  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  manner 
that  combines  so  well  the  Ciceronian  dignity  with  the  rich 
colour  and  high  finish  added  to  Latin  prose  by  the  writers 
of  the  earlier  empire. 

The  body  of  criticism  left  by  Quintilian  in  this  remark- 
able chapter  is  the  more  valuable  because  it  includes  nearly 
all  the  great  Latin  writers.  Classical  literature,  little  as  it 
may  have  seemed  so  at  the  time,  was  already  nearing  its 
end.  With  the  generation  which  immediately  followed, 
that  of  his  younger  contemporaries,  the  Silver  Age  closes, 
and  a  new  age  begins,  which,  though  full  of  interest  in 
many  ways,  is  no  longer  classical.  After  Tacitus  and  the 
younger  Pliny,  the  main  stream  dwindles  and  loses  itself 
among  quicksands.  The  writers  who  continue  the  pure 
classical  tradition  are  few,  and  of  inferior  power ;  and  the 
chief  interest  of  Latin  literature  becomes  turned  in  other 
directions,  to  the  Christian  writers  on  the  one  hand,  and 


II.]  Quintilian.  203 

on  the  other  to  those  authors  in  whom  we  may  trace  the 
beginning  of  new  styles  and  methods,  some  of  which  bore 
fruit  at  the  time,  while  others  remained  undeveloped  till 
the  later  Middle  Ages.  Why  this  final  effort  of  purely 
Roman  culture,  made  in  the  Flavian  era  with  such  sustained 
energy  and  ability,  on  the  whole  scarcely  survived  a  single 
generation,  is  a  question  to  which  no  simple  answer  can  be 
given.  It  brings  us  once  more  face  to  face  with  the  other 
question,  which,  indeed,  haunts  Latin  literature  from  the 
outset,  whether  the  conquest  and  absorption  of  Greece  by 
Rome  did  not  carry  with  it  the  seeds  of  a  fatal  weakness 
in  the  victorious  literature.  Up  to  the  end  of  the  Golden 
Age  fresh  waves  of  Greek  influence  had  again  and  again 
given  new  vitality  and  enlarged  power  to  the  Latin  language. 
That  influence  had  now  exhausted  itself;  for  the  Latin 
world  Greece  had  no  further  message.  That  Latin  literature 
began  to  decline  so  soon  after  the  stimulating  Greek  influ- 
ence ceased  to  operate,  was  partly  due  to  external  causes ; 
the  empire  began  to  fight  for  its  existence  before  the  end 
of  the  second  century,  and  never  afterwards  gained  a  pause 
in  the  continuous  drain  of  its  vital  force.  But  there  was 
another  reason  more  intimate  and  inherent ;  a  literature 
formed  so  completely  on  that  of  Greece  paid  the  penalty 
in  a  certain  loss  of  independent  vitality.  The  gap  between 
the  literary  Latin  and  the  actual  speech  of  the  mass  of 
Latin-speaking  people  became  too  great  to  bridge  over. 
Classical  Latin  poetry  was,  as  we  have  seen,  written 
throughout  in  alien  metres,  to  which  indeed  the  language 
was  adapted  with  immense  dexterity,  but  which  still  re- 
mained foreign  to  its  natural  structure.  To  a  certain  degree 
the  same  was  even  true  of  prose,  at  least  of  the  more  im- 
aginative prose  which  was  developed  through  a  study  of 
the  great  Greek  masters  of  history,  oratory,  and  philosophy. 
In  the  Silver  Age  Latin  literature,  feeling  a  great  past  behind 
it,  definitely  tried  to  cut  itself  away  from  Greece  and  stand 
on  its  own  feet.  Quintilian's  criticism  implies  throughout 


2O4  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

that  the  two  literatures  were  on  a  footing  of  substantial 
equality ;  Cicero  is  sufficient  for  him,  as  Virgil  is  for  Statius. 
Even  Martial,  it  has  been  noted,  hardly  ever  alludes  to 
Greek  authors,  while  he  is  full  of  references  to  those  of  his 
own  country.  The  eminent  grammarians  of  the  age, 
Aemilius  Asper,  Marcus  Valerius  Probus,  Quintus  Asco- 
nius  Pedianus,  show  the  same  tendency ;  their  main  work 
was  in  commenting  on  the  great  Latin  writers.  The 
elaborate  editions  of  the  Latin  poets,  from  Lucretius  to 
Persius,  produced  by  Probus,  and  the  commentaries  on 
Terence,  Cicero,  Sallust,  and  Virgil  by  Asconius  and 
Asper,  were  the  work  of  a  generation  to  whom  these 
authors  had  become  in  effect  the  classics.  But  literature, 
as  the  event  proved  not  for  the  first  or  the  last  time,  cannot 
live  long  on  the  study  of  the  classics  alone. 


m. 

TACTTUS. 

THE  end,  however,  was  not  yet;  and  in  the  generation 
which  immediately  followed,  the  single  imposing  figure  of 
Cornelius  Tacitus,  the  last  of  the  great  classical  writers, 
adds  a  final  and,  as  it  were,  a  sunset  splendour  to  the 
literature  of  Rome.  The  reigns  of  Nerva  and  Trajan,  how- 
ever much  they  were  hailed  as  the  beginning  of  a  golden 
age,  were  really  far  less  fertile  in  literary  works  than  those 
of  the  Flavian  Emperors ;  and  the  boasted  restoration  of 
freedom  of  speech  was  almost  immediately  followed  by  an 
all  but  complete  silence  of  the  Latin  tongue.  When  to 
the  name  of  Tacitus  are  added  those  of  Juvenal  and  the 
younger  Pliny,  there  is  literally  almost  no  other  author  — 
none  certainly  of  the  slightest  literary  importance  —  to  be 
chronicled  until  the  reign  of  Hadrian ;  and  even  then  the 
principal  authors  are  Greek,  while  mere  compilers  or 
grammarians  like  Gellius  and  Suetonius  are  all  that  Latin 
literature  has  to  show.  The  beginnings  of  Christian  litera- 
ture in  Minucius  Felix,  and  of  mediaeval  literature  in 
Apuleius  and  the  author  of  the  Pervigilium  Veneris,  rise 
in  an  age  scanty  in  the  amount  and  below  mediocrity  in 
the  substance  of  its  production. 

Little  is  known  of  the  birth  and  parentage  of  Tacitus 
beyond  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  a  Roman  of  good  family. 
Tradition  places  his  birth  at  Interamna  early  in  the  reign 
of  Nero ;  he  passed  through  the  regular  stages  of  an  official 


206  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

career  under  the  three  Flavian  Emperors.  His  marriage, 
towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Vespasian,  to  the  daughter 
and  only  surviving  child  of  the  eminent  soldier  and  ad- 
ministrator, Gnaeus  Julius  Agricola,  aided  him  in  obtaining 
rapid  promotion;  he  was  praetor  in  the  year  in  which 
Domitian  celebrated  the  Secular  Games,  and  rose  to  the 
dignity  of  the  consulship  during  the  brief  reign  of  Nerva. 
He  was  then  a  little  over  forty.  When  still  quite  a  young 
man  he  had  written  the  dialogue  on  oratory,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  interesting  of  Latin  works  on  literary  criticism  ; 
but  throughout  the  reign  of  Domitian  his  pen  was  wholly 
laid  aside.  The  celebrated  passage  of  the  Agricola  in 
which  he  accounts  for  this  silence  may  or  may  not  give 
an  adequate  account  of  the  facts,  but  at  all  events  gives 
the  keynote  of  the  whole  of  his  subsequent  work,  and  of 
that  view  of  the  imperial  government  of  the  first  century 
which  his  genius  has  fixed  ineradicably  in  the  imagination 
of  the  world.  Under  Domitian  a  servile  senate  had  ordered 
the  works  of  the  two  most  eminent  martyrs  of  reactionary 
Stoicism,  Arulenus  Rusticus  and  Herennius  Senecio,  to  be 
publicly  burned  in  the  forum ;  "  thinking  that  in  that  fire 
they  consumed  the  voice  of  the  Roman  people,  their  own 
freedom,  and  the  conscience  of  mankind.  Great  indeed," 
he  bitterly  continues,  "are  the  proofs  we  have  given  of 
what  we  can  endure.  The  antique  time  saw  to  the  utmost 
bounds  of  freedom,  we  of  servitude  ;  robbed  by  an  inquisi- 
tion of  the  common  use  of  speech  and  hearing,  we  should 
have  lost  our  very  memory  with  our  voice,  were  it  as  much 
in  our  power  to  forget  as  to  be  dumb.  Now  at  last  our 
breath  has  come  back ;  yet  in  the  nature  of  human  frailty 
remedies  are  slower  than  their  diseases,  and  genius  and 
learning  are  more  easily  extinguished  than  recalled.  Fifteen 
years  have  been  taken  out  of  our  lives,  while  youth  passed 
silently  into  age ;  and  we  are  the  wretched  survivors,  not 
only  of  those  who  have  been  taken  away  from  us,  but  of 
ourselves."  Even  a  colourless  translation  may  give  some 


III.]  Tacitus.  207 

idea  of  the  distilled  bitterness  of  this  tremendous  indict- 
ment. We  must  remember  that  they  are  the  words  of  a 
man  in  the  prime  of  life  and  at  the  height  of  public  dis- 
tinction, under  a  prince  of  whose  government  he  speaks  in 
terms  of  almost  extravagant  hope  and  praise,  to  realise  the 
spirit  in  which  he  addressed  himself  to  paint  his  lurid 
portraits  of  Tiberius  or  Nero  or  Domitian. 

The  exquisitely  beautiful  memoir  of  his  father-in-law,  in 
the  introduction  to  which  this  passage  occurs,  was  written 
by  Tacitus  in  the  year  which  succeeded  his  own  consulship, 
and  which  saw  the  accession  of  Trajan.  He  was  then 
already  meditating  a  large  historical  work  on  the  events  of 
his  own  lifetime,  for  which  he  had,  by  reading  and  reflection, 
as  well  as  by  his  own  administrative  experience,  accumu- 
lated large  materials.  The  essay  De  Origine  Situ  Moribus 
ac  Populis  Germaniae  was  published  about  the  same  time 
or  a  little  later,  and  no  doubt  represents  part  of  the 
material  which  he  had  collected  for  the  chapters  of  his 
history  dealing  with  the  German  wars,  and  which,  as  much 
of  it  fell  outside  the  scope  of  a  general  history  of  Rome, 
he  found  it  worth  his  while  to  publish  as  a  separate  treatise. 
The  scheme  of  his  work  became  larger  in  the  course  of  its 
progress.  As  he  originally  planned  it,  it  was  to  begin  with 
the  accession  of  Galba,  thus  dealing  with  a  period  which 
fell  entirely  within  his  own  lifetime,  and  indeed  within  his 
own  recollection.  But  after  completing  his  account  of  the 
six  reigns  from  Galba  to  Domitian,  he  did  not,  as  he  had 
at  first  proposed,  go  on  to  those  of  Nerva  and  Trajan,  but 
resumed  his  task  at  an  earlier  period,  and  composed  an 
equally  elaborate  history  of  the  empiie  from  the  death  of 
Augustus  down  to  the  point  where  his  earlier  work  began. 
He  still  cherished  the  hope  of  resuming  his  history  from 
the  accession  of  Nerva,  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  lived 
long  enough  to  do  so.  Allusions  to  the  Eastern  conquests 
of  Trajan  in  the  Annals  show  that  the  work  cannot  have 
been  published  till  after  the  year  115,  and  it  would  seem  — 


208  Latin  Literature.  [HI 

though  nothing  is  known  as  to  the  events  or  employments 
of  his  later  life  —  that  he  did  not  long  survive  that  date. 
But  the  thirty  books  of  his  Annals  and  Histories,  themselves 
splendid  work  for  a  lifetime,  gave  the  continuous  history 
of  the  empire  in  the  most  crucial  and  on  the  whole  the 
most  remarkable  period  of  its  existence,  the  eighty-two 
years  which  succeeded  the  death  of  its  founder. 

As  in  so  many  other  cases,  this  memorable  work  has 
only  escaped  total  loss  by  the  slenderest  of  chances.  As  it 
is,  only  about  one-half  of  the  whole  work  is  extant,  consist- 
ing of  four  large  fragments.  The  first  of  these,  which 
begins  at  the  beginning,  breaks  off  abruptly  in  the  fifteenth 
year  of  the  reign  of  Tiberius.  A  gap  of  two  years  follows, 
and  the  second  fragment  carries  on  the  history  to  Tiberius' 
death.  The  story  of  the  reign  of  Caligula  is  wholly  lost ; 
the  third  fragment  begins  in  the  seventh  year  of  Claudius, 
and  goes  on  as  far  as  the  thirteenth  of  Nero.  The  fourth, 
consisting  of  the  first  four  and  part  of  the  fifth  book  of 
the  earlier  part  of  the  work,  contains  the  events  of  little 
more  than  a  year,  but  that  the  terrible  "  year  of  Emperors  " 
which  followed  the  overthrow  of  Nero  and  shook  the 
Roman  world  to  its  foundations.  A  single  manuscript  has 
preserved  the  last  two  of  these  four  fragments  ;  to  the  hand 
of  one  nameless  Italian  monk  of  the  eleventh  century  we 
owe  our  knowledge  of  one  of  the  greatest  masterpieces  of 
the  ancient  world. 

Not  the  least  interesting  point  in  the  study  of  the  writings 
of  Tacitus  is  the  way  in  which  we  can  see  his  unique  style 
gradually  forming  and  changing  from  his  earlier  to  his  later 
manner.  The  dialogue  De  Oratoribus  is  his  earliest  extant 
work.  Its  scene  is  laid  in  or  about  the  year  75.  But 
Tacitus  was  then  little  if  at  all  over  twenty,  and  it  may  have 
been  written  some  five  or  six  years  later.  In  this  book  the 
influence  of  Quintilian  and  the  Ciceronian  school  is  strongly 
marked ;  there  is  so  much  of  Ciceronianism  in  the  style 
that  many  scholars  have  been  inclined  to  assign  it  to  some 


III.]  Tacitus.  209 

other  author,  or  have  even  identified  it  with  the  lost 
treatise  of  Quintilian  himself,  on  the  Causes  of  the  Decay  of 
Eloquence.  But  its  style,  while  it  bears  the  general  colour 
of  the  Silver  Age,  has  also  large  traces  of  that  compressed 
and  allusive  manner  which  Tacitus  later  carried  to  such  an 
extreme  degree  of  perfection.  Full  as  it  is  of  the  ardor 
iuvenilis,  page  after  page  recalling  that  Ciceronian  manner 
with  which  we  are  familiar  in  the  Brutus  or  the  De  Oratore 
by  the  balance  of  the  periods,  by  the  elaborate  similes, 
and  by  a  certain  fluid  and  florid  evolution  of  what  is 
really  commonplace  thought,  a  touch  here  and  there,  like 
contemnebat potius  literas  quam  nesciebat,  or  vitio  malignitatis 
humanae  vetera  semper  in  laude,  praesentia  in  fastidio  esse, 
or  the  criticism  on  the  poetry  of  Caesar  and  Brutus,  non 
melius  quam  Cicero,  sed  felicius,  quia  illos  fecisse  pauciores 
sciunt,  anticipates  the  author  of  the  Annals,  with  his  mastery 
of  biting  phrase  and  his  unequalled  power  of  innuendo.  The 
defence  and  attack  of  the  older  oratory  are  both  dramatic, 
and  to  a  certain  extent  unreal ;  it  is  probable  that  the 
dialogue  does  in  fact  represent  the  matter  of  actual  dis- 
cussions between  the  two  principal  interlocutors,  celebrated 
orators  of  the  Flavian  period,  to  which  as  a  young  student 
Tacitus  had  himself  listened.  One  phrase  dropped  by 
Aper,  the  apologist  of  the  modern  school,  is  of  special 
interest  as  coming  from  the  future  historian ;  among  the 
faults  of  the  Ciceronian  oratory  is  mentioned  a  languor  and 
heaviness  in  narration  —  tarda  et  iners  structura  in  morem 
annalium.  It  is  just  this  quality  in  historical  composition 
that  Tacitus  set  himself  sedulously  to  conquer.  By  every 
artifice  of  style,  by  daring  use  of  vivid  words  and  elliptical 
constructions,  by  studied  avoidance  of  the  old  balance  of 
the  sentence,  he  established  a  new  historical  manner  which, 
whatever  may  be  its  failings  —  and  in  the  hands  of  any 
writer  of  less  genius  they  become  at  once  obvious  and 
intolerable  —  never  drops  dead  or  says  a  thing  in  a  certain 
way  because  it  is  the  way  in  which  the  ordinary  rules  of 
p 


2io  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

style  would  prescribe  that  it  should  be  said.  A  comparison 
has  often  been  drawn  between  Tacitus  and  Carlyle  in  this 
matter.  It  may  easily  be  pressed  too  far,  as  in  some  rather 
grotesque  attempts  made  to  translate  portions  of  the  Latin 
author  into  phrases  chosen  or  copied  from  the  modern ; 
but  there  is  enough  likeness  to  give  some  colour  even  to 
these  attempts.  Both  authors  began  by  writing  in  the 
rather  mechanical  and  commonplace  style  which  was  the 
current  fashion  during  their  youth ;  in  both  the  evolution 
of  the  personal  and  inimitable  manner  from  these  earlier 
essays  into  the  full  perfection  of  the  Annals  and  the  French 
Revolution  is  a  lesson  in  language  of  immense  interest. 

The  fifteen  silent  years  of  Tacitus  followed  the  publi- 
cation of  the  dialogue  on  oratory.  In  the  Agricola  and 
Germania  the  distinctively  Tacitean  style  is  still  immature, 
though  it  is  well  on  the  way  towards  maturity.  The  Germania 
is  less  read  for  its  literary  merit  than  as  the  principal  extant 
account,  and  the  only  one  which  professes  to  cover  the 
ground  at  all  systematically,  of  Central  Europe  under  the 
early  Roman  Empire.  It  does  not  appear  whether,  in 
the  course  of  his  official  employments,  Tacitus  had  ever 
been  stationed  on  the  frontier  either  of  the  Rhine  or  of  the 
Danube.  The  treatise  bears  little  or  no  traces  of  first- 
hand knowledge  ;  nor  does  he  mention  his  authorities,  with 
the  single  exception  of  a  reference  to  Caesar's  Gallic  War. 
We  can  hardly  doubt  that  he  made  free  use  of  the  material 
amassed  by  Pliny  in  his  Bella  Germaniae,  and  it  is  quite 
possible  that  he  really  used  few  other  sources.  For  the 
work,  though  full  of  information,  is  not  critically  written, 
and  the  historian  constantly  tends  to  pass  into  the  moralist. 
The  Ciceronian  style  has  now  completely  worn  away,  but 
his  manner  is  still  as  deeply  rhetorical  as  ever.  What  he 
has  in  view  throughout  is  to  bring  the  vices  of  civilised 
luxury  into  stronger  relief  by  a  contrast  with  the  idealised 
simplicity  of  the  German  tribes ;  and  though  his  knowledge 
and  his  candour  alike  make  him  stop  short  of  falsifying 


III.]  Tacitus.  211 

facts,  his  selection  and  disposition  of  facts  is  guided  less  by 
a  historical  than  by  an  ethical  purpose.  His  lucid  and 
accurate  description  of  the  amber  of  the  Baltic  seems  merely 
introduced  to  point  a  sarcastic  reference  to  Roman  luxury ; 
and  the  whole  of  the  extremely  valuable  general  account  of 
the  social  life  of  the  Western  German  tribes  is  drawn  in 
implicit  or  expressed  contrast  to  the  elaborate  social  con- 
ventions of  what  he  considers  a  corrupt  and  degenerate 
civilisation.  The  exaggeration  of  the  sentiment  is  more 
marked  than  in  any  of  his  other  writings ;  thus  the  fine 
outburst,  Nemo  illic  vitia  ridet,  nee  corrumpere  et  corrumpi 
seculum  vocatur,  concludes  a  passage  in  which  he  gravely 
suggests  that  the  invention  of  writing  is  fatal  to  moral 
innocence ;  and  though  he  is  candid  enough  to  note  the 
qualities  of  laziness  and  drunkenness  which  the  Germans 
shared  with  other  half-barbarous  races,  he  glosses  over  the 
other  quality  common  to  savages,  want  of  feeling,  with  the 
sounding  and  grandiose  commonplace,  expressed  in  a 
phrase  of  characteristic  force  and  brevity,  feminis  lugere 
honestum  est,  viris  meminisse. 

The  Agricola,  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  piece  of 
biography  in  ancient  literature,  stands  on  a  much  higher 
level  than  the  Germania,  because  here  his  heart  was  in  the 
work.  The  rhetorical  bent  is  row  fully  under  control, 
while  his  mastery  over  "  disposition  "  (to  use  the  term  of  the 
schools),  or  what  one  might  call  the  architectural  quality  of 
the  book,  could  only  have  been  gained  by  such  large  and 
deep  study  of  the  art  of  rhetoric  as  is  inculcated  by  Quin- 
tilian.  The  Agricola  has  the  stateliness,  the  ordered 
movement,  of  a  funeral  oration ;  the  peroration,  as  it  might 
not  unfairly  be  called,  of  the  two  concluding  chapters, 
reaches  the  highest  level  of  the  grave  Roman  eloquence, 
and  its  language  vibrates  with  a  depth  of  feeling  to  which 
Lucretius  and  Virgil  alone  in  their  greatest  passages  offer  a 
parallel  in  Latin.  The  sentence,  with  its  subtle  Virgilian 
echoes,  in  which  he  laments  his  own  and  his  wife's  absence 


212  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

from  Agricola's  death-bed  —  omnia  sine  dubio,  optime  paren- 
tum,  adsidente  amantissima  uxore  superfuere  honori  tuo  ; 
paucioribus  tamen  lacrimis  comploratus  es,  etnovissima  in  luce 
desideraverunt  aliquid  oculi  ttii  —  shows  a  new  and  strange 
power  in  Latin.  It  is  still  the  ancient  language,  but  it 
anticipates  in  its  cadences  the  language  of  the  Vulgate  and 
of  the  statelier  mediaeval  prose. 

Together  with  this  remarkable  power  over  new  prose 
rhythms,  Tacitus  shows  in  the  Agricola  the  complete  mastery 
of  mordant  and  unforgettable  phrase  which  makes  his 
mature  writing  so  unique.  Into  three  or  four  ordinary 
words  he  can  put  more  concentrated  meaning  than  any 
other  author.  The  likeness  and  contrast  between  these 
brief  phrases  of  his  and  the  "  half-lines  "  of  Virgil  might 
repay  a  long  study.  They  are  alike  in  their  simple  language, 
which  somehow  or  other  is  charged  with  the  whole  person- 
ality of  the  author  ;  but  the  personality  itself  is  in  the  sharpest 
antithesis.  The  Virgilian  phrases,  with  their  grave  pity,  are 
steeped  in  a  golden  softness  that  is  just  touched  with  a 
far-off  trouble,  a  pathetic  waver  in  the  voice  as  if  tears  were 
not  far  below  it.  Those  of  Tacitus  are  charged  with 
indignation  instead  of  pity ;  "  like  a  jewel  hung  in  ghastly 
night,"  to  use  Shakespeare's  memorable  simile,  or  like  the 
red  and  angry  autumnal  star  in  the  Iliad,  they  quiver  and 
burn.  Phrases  like  the  famous  ubi  solitudinem  faciunt paccm 
appellant,  or  the  felix  opportunitate  mortis,  are  the  concen- 
trated utterance  of  a  great  but  deeply  embittered  mind. 

In  this  spirit  Tacitus  set  himself  to  narrate  the  history  of 
the  first  century  of  the  Empire.  Under  the  settled  equable 
government  of  Trajan,  the  reigns  of  the  Julio-Claudian  house 
rapidly  became  a  legendary  epoch,  a  region  of  prodigies 
and  nightmares  and  Titanic  crimes.  Even  at  the  time 
they  happened  many  of  the  events  of  those  years  had  thrown 
the  imagination  of  their  spectators  into  a  fever.  The  strong 
taint  of  insanity  in  the  Claudian  blood  seemed  to  have 
communicated  itself  to  the  world  ruled  over  by  that  extra- 


III.]  Tacitus.  213 

ordinary  series  of  men,  about  whom  there  was  something 
inhuman  and  supernatural.  Most  of  them  were  publicly 
deified  before  their  death.  The  Fortuna  Urbis  took  in  them 
successive  and  often  monstrous  incarnations.  Augustus 
himself  was  supposed  to  have  the  gift  of  divination ;  his 
foreknowledge  overleapt  the  extinction  of  his  own  house, 
and  foresaw,  across  a  gap  of  fifty  years,  the  brief  reign  of 
Galba.  Caligula  threw  an  arch  of  prodigious  span  over  the 
Roman  Forum,  above  the  roofs  of  the  basilica  of  Julius 
Caesar,  that  from  his  house  on  the  Palatine  he  might  cross 
more  easily  to  sup  with  his  brother,  Jupiter  Capitolinus. 
Nero's  death  was  for  years  regarded  over  half  the  Empire 
as  incredible ;  men  waited  in  a  frenzy  of  excited  terror  for 
the  reappearance  of  the  vanished  Antichrist.  Even  the 
Flavian  house  was  surrounded  by  much  of  the  same  super- 
natural atmosphere.  The  accession  of  Vespasian  was 
signalised  by  his  performing  public  miracles  in  Egypt ; 
Domitian,  when  he  directed  that  he  should  be  formally 
addressed  as  Our  Lord  God  by  all  who  approached  him, 
was  merely  settling  rules  for  an  established  practise  of  court 
etiquette.  In  this  thunderous  unnatural  air  legends  of  all 
sorts  sprung  up  right  and  left ;  foremost,  and  including 
nearly  all  the  rest,  the  legend  of  the  Empire  itself,  which 
(like  that  of  the  French  Revolution)  we  are  only  now 
beginning  to  unravel.  The  modern  school  of  historians 
find  in  authentic  documents,  written  and  unwritten,  the 
story  of  a  continuous  and  able  administration  of  the  Empire 
through  all  those  years  by  the  permanent  officials,  and 
traces  of  a  continuous  personal  policy  of  the  Emperors 
themselves  sustaining  that  administration  against  the  re- 
actionary tendencies  of  the  Senate.  Even  the  massacres  of 
Nero  and  Domitian  are  held  to  have  been  probably  dictated 
by  imperious  public  necessity.  The  confidential  advisers 
of  the  Emperors  acted  as  a  sort  of  Committee  of  Public 
Safety,  silent  and  active,  while  the  credit  or  obloquy  was 
all  heaped  on  a  single  person.  It  took  three  generations 


214  Latin  Literature.  [Ill 

to  carry  the  imperial  system  finally  out  of  danger ;  but 
when  this  end  was  at  last  attained,  the  era  of  the  Good 
Emperors  succeeded  as  a  matter  of  course ;  much  as  in 
France,  the  success  of  the  Revolution  once  fairly  secured, 
the  moderate  government  of  the  Directory  and  Consulate 
quietly  succeeded  to  the  Terror  and  the  Revolutionary 
Tribunal. 

Such  is  one  view  now  taken  of  the  early  Roman  Empire. 
Its  weakness  is  that  it  explains  too  much.  How  or  why, 
if  the  matter  was  really  as  simple  as  this,  did  the  traditional 
legend  of  the  Empire  grow  up  and  extinguish  the  real 
facts?  Is  it  possible  that  the  malignant  genius  of  a  single 
historian  should  outweigh,  not  only  perishable  facts,  but 
the  large  body  of  imperialist  literature  which  extends  from 
the  great  Augustans  down  to  Statius  and  Quintilian? 
Even  if  we  set  aside  Juvenal  and  Suetonius  as  a  rhetorician 
and  a  gossipmonger,  that  only  makes  the  weight  Tacitus 
has  to  sustain  more  overwhelming.  It  is  hardly  possible 
to  overrate  the  effect  of  a  single  work  of  great  genius ; 
but  the  more  we  study  works  of  great  genius  the  more 
certain  does  it  appear  that  they  are  all  founded  on  real, 
though  it  may  be  transcendental,  truth.  Systems,  like 
persons,  are  to  be  known  by  their  fruits.  The  Empire 
produced,  as  the  flower  of  its  culture  and  in  the  inner 
circle  of  its  hierarchy,  the  type  of  men  of  whom  Tacitus 
is  the  most  eminent  example ;  and  the  indignant  hatred 
it  kindled  in  its  children  leaves  it  condemned  before  the 
judgment  of  history. 

The  surviving  fragments  of  the  Annals  and  Histories 
leave  three  great  pictures  impressed  upon  the  reader's 
mind  :  the  personality  of  Tiberius,  the  court  of  Nero,  and 
the  whole  fabric  and  machinery  of  empire  in  the  year 
of  the  four  Emperors.  The  lost  history  of  the  reigns  of 
Caligula  and  Domitian  would  no  doubt  have  added  two 
other  pictures  as  memorable  and  as  dramatic,  but  could 
hardly  make  any  serious  change  in  the  main  structure  of 


III.]  Tacitus.  21$ 

the  imperial  legend  as  it  is  successively  presented  in  these 
three  imposing  scenes. 

The  character  and  statesmanship  of  Tiberius  is  one  of 
the  most  vexed  problems  in  Roman  history;  and  it  is 
significant  to  observe  how,  in  all  the  discussions  about 
it,  the  question  perpetually  reverts  to  another  —  the  view 
to  be  taken  of  the  personality  of  the  historian  who  wrote 
nearly  a  century  after  Tiberius'  accession,  and  was  not 
born  till  long  after  his  death.  In  no  part  of  his  work 
does  Tacitus  use  his  great  weapon,  insinuation  of  motive, 
with  such  terrible  effect.  All  the  speeches  or  letters  of 
the  Emperor  quoted  by  him,  almost  all  the  actions  he 
records,  are  given  with  this  malign  sidelight  upon  them  : 
that,  in  spite  of  it,  we  lose  our  respect  for  neither  Emperor 
nor  historian  is  strong  evidence  both  of  the  genius  of 
the  latter  and  the  real  greatness  of  the  former.  The  case 
of  Germanicus  Caesar  is  a  cardinal  instance.  In  the  whole 
account  of  the  relations  of  Tiberius  to  his  nephew  there 
is  nothing  in  the  mere  facts  as  stated  inconsistent  with 
confidence  and  even  with  cordiality.  Tiberius  pronounces 
a  long  and  stately  eulogy  on  Germanicus  in  the  senate 
for  his  suppression  of  the  revolt  of  the  German  legions. 
He  recalls  him  from  the  German  frontier,  where  the 
Roman  supremacy  was  now  thoroughly  re-established,  and 
where  the  hot-headed  young  general  was  on  the  point 
of  entangling  himself  in  fresh  and  dangerous  conquests, 
in  order  to  place  him  in  supreme  command  in  the  Eastern 
provinces ;  but  first  he  allows  him  the  splendid  pageant 
of  a  Roman  triumph,  and  gives  an  immense  donative 
to  the  population  of  the  capital  in  his  nephew's  name. 
Germanicus  is  sent  to  the  East  with  maius  imperium  over 
the  whole  of  the  transmarine  provinces,  a  position  more 
splendid  than  any  that  Tiberius  himself  had  held  during 
the  lifetime  of  Augustus,  and  one  that  almost  raised  him  to 
the  rank  of  a  colleague  in  the  Empire.  Then  Germanicus 
embroils  himself  hopelessly  with  his  principal  subordinate, 


216  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

the  imperial  legate  of  Syria,  and  his  illness  and  death 
at  Antioch  put  an  end  to  a  situation  which  is  rapidly 
becoming  impossible.  His  remains  are  solemnly  brought 
back  to  Rome,  and  honoured  with  a  splendid  funeral ;  the 
proclamation  of  Tiberius  fixing  the  termination  of  the 
public  mourning  is  in  its  gravity  and  good  sense  one  of 
the  most  striking  documents  in  Roman  history.  But  in 
Tacitus  every  word  and  action  of  Tiberius  has  its  malignant 
interpretation  or  comment.  He  recalls  Germanicus  from 
the  Rhine  out  of  mingled  jealousy  and  fear;  he  makes 
him  viceroy  of  the  East  in  order  to  carry  out  a  diabolically 
elaborate  scheme  for  bringing  about  his  destruction.  The 
vague  rumours  of  poison  or  magic  that  ran  during  his 
last  illness  among  the  excitable  and  grossly  superstitious 
populace  of  Antioch  are  gravely  recorded  as  ground  for 
the  worst  suspicions.  That  dreadful  woman,  the  elder 
Agrippina,  had,  even  in  her  husband's  lifetime,  made  herself 
intolerable  by  her  pride  and  jealousy ;  after  her  husband's 
death  she  seems  to  have  become  quite  insane,  and  the 
recklessness  of  her  tongue  knew  no  bounds.  To  Tacitus 
all  her  ravings,  collected  from  hearsay  or  preserved  in 
the  memoirs  of  her  equally  appalling  daughter,  the  mother 
of  Nero,  represent  serious  historical  documents ;  and  the 
portrait  of  Tiberius  is  from  first  to  last  deeply  influenced 
by,  and  indeed  largely  founded  on,  the  testimony  of  a 
madwoman. 

The  three  books  and  a  half  of  the  Annals  which  contair 
the  principate  of  Nero  are  not  occupied  with  the  portrai 
ture  of  a  single  great  personality,  nor  are  they  full,  like 
the  earlier  books,  of  scathing  phrases  and  poisonous 
insinuations.  The  reign  of  Nero  was,  indeed,  one  which 
required  little  rhetorical  artifice  to  present  as  something 
portentous.  The  external  history  of  the  Empire,  till 
towards  its  close,  was  without  remarkable  incident.  The 
wars  on  the  Armenian  frontier  hardly  affected  the  general 
quiet  of  the  Empire  ;  the  revolt  of  Britain  was  an  isolated 


III.]  Tacitus.  217 

occurrence,  and  soon  put  down.  The  German  tribes, 
engaged  in  fierce  internal  conflicts,  left  the  legions  on 
the  Rhine  almost  undisturbed.  The  provinces,  though 
suffering  under  heavy  taxation,  were  on  the  whole  well 
ruled.  Public  interest  was  concentrated  on  the  capital ; 
and  the  startling  events  which  took  place  there  gave  the 
fullest  scope  to  the  dramatic  genius  of  the  historian.  The 
court  of  Nero  lives  before  us  in  his  masterly  delineation. 
Nero  himself,  Seneca  and  Tigellinus,  the  Empress-mother, 
the  conspirators  of  the  year  65,  form  a  portrait-gallery 
of  sombre  magnificence,  which  surpasses  in  vivid  power 
the  more  elaborate  and  artificial  picture  of  the  reign  of 
Tiberius.  With  all  his  immense  ability  and  his  deep 
psychological  insight,  Tacitus  is  not  a  profound  political 
thinker ;  as  he  approaches*  the  times  which  fell  within  his 
own  personal  knowledge  he  disentangles  himself  more  and 
more  from  the  preconceptions  of  narrow  theory,  and  gives 
his  dramatic  gift  fuller  play.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
the  Histories,  dealing  with  a  period  which  was  wholly 
within  his  own  lifetime,  and  many  of  the  main  actors  in 
which  he  knew  personally  and  intimately,  are  a  greater 
historical  work  than  even  the  Annals.  He  moves  with  a 
more  certain  step  in  an  ampler  field.  The  events  of  the 
year  69,  which  occupy  almost  the  whole  of  the  extant 
part  of  the  Histories,  offer  the  largest  and  most  crowded 
canvas  ever  presented  to  a  Roman  historian.  And  Tacitus 
rises  fully  to  the  amplitude  of  his  subject.  It  is  in  these 
books  that  the  material  greatness  of  the  Empire  has  found 
its  largest  expression.  In  the  Annals  Rome  is  the  core 
of  the  world,  and  the  provinces  stretch  dimly  away  from 
it,  shaken  from  time  to  time  by  wars  or  military  revolts 
that  hardly  touch  the  great  central  life  of  the  capital. 
Here,  though  the  action  opens  indeed  in  the  capital  in  that 
wet  stormy  January,  the  main  interest  is  soon  transferred 
to  distant  fields ;  the  life  of  the  Empire  still  converges  on 
Rome  as  a  centre,  but  no  longer  issues  from  it  as  from 


218  Latin  Literature.  £iiic 

a  common  heart  and  brain.  The  provinces  had  been  the 
spoil  of  Rome ;  Rome  herself  is  now  becoming  the  spoil 
of  the  provinces.  The  most  splendid  piece  of  narration 
in  the  Histories,  and  one  of  the  finest  in  the  work  of  any 
historian,  is  the  story  of  the  second  battle  of  Bedriacum, 
and  the  storm  and  sack  of  Cremona  by  the  Moesian  and 
Pannonian  legions.  This  is  the  central  thought  which 
makes  it  so  tragical.  The  little  vivid  touches  in  which 
Tacitus  excels  are  used  towards  this  purpose  with  ex- 
traordinary effect;  as  in  the  incident  of  the  third  legion 
saluting  the  rising  sun  —  ita  in  Suria  mos  est —  which  brings 
before  our  imagination  the  new  and  fatal  character  of 
the  great  provincial  armies,  or  the  casual  words  of  the 
Flavian  general,  The  bath  will  soon  be  hot  enough,  which 
gave  the  signal  for  the  burning  of  Cremona.  In  these 
scenes  the  whole  tragedy  of  the  Empire  rises  before  us. 
The  armies  of  the  Danube  and  Rhine  left  the  frontiers 
defenceless  while  they  met  in  the  shock  of  battle  on 
Italian  soil,  still  soaking  with  Roman  blood  and  littered 
with  unburied  Roman  corpses ;  behind  them  the  whole 
armed  strength  of  the  Empire  —  immensa  belli  moles  —  was 
gathering  out  of  Gaul,  Spain,  Syria,  and  Hungary;  and 
before  the  year  was  out,  the  Roman  Capitol  itself,  in  a 
trifling  struggle  between  small  bodies  of  the  opposing 
forces,  went  up  in  flame  at  the  hands  of  the  German  troops 
of  Vitellius. 

This  great  pageant  of  history  is  presented  by  Tacitus  in 
a  style  which,  in  its  sombre  yet  gorgeous  colouring,  is 
unique  in  literature.  In  mere  grammatical  mechanism  it 
bears  close  affinity  to  the  other  Latin  writing  of  the  period, 
but  in  all  its  more  intimate  qualities  it  is  peculiar  to  Tacitus 
aione ;  he  founded  his  own  style,  and  did  not  transmit 
it  to  any  successor.  The  influence  of  Virgil  over  prose 
reaches  in  him  its  most  marked  degree.  Direct  transfer- 
ences of  phrase  are  not  infrequent ;  and  throughout,  as  one 
reads  the  Histories  t  one  is  reminded  of  the  Aeneid,  not  only 


III.]  Tacitus.  219 

by  particular  phrases,  but  by  a  more  indefinable  quality 
permeating  the  style.  The  narrative  of  the  siege  and  firing 
of  the  Capitol,  to  take  one  striking  instance,  is  plainly 
from  the  hand  of  a  writer  saturated  with  the  movement 
and  language  of  Virgil's  Sack  of  Troy.  A  modern  historian 
might  have  quoted  Virgil  in  a  note;  with  Tacitus  the 
Virgilian  reminiscences  are  interwoven  with  the  whole 
structure  of  his  narrative.  The  whole  of  the  three  fine 
chapters  will  repay  minute  comparison;  but  some  of  the 
more  striking  resemblances  are  worth  noting  as  a  study 
in  language.  Erigunt  aciem,  says  the  historian,  usque  ad 
primas  Capitolinae  arcis  fores  .  .  .  in  tectum  egressi  saxis 
tegulisque  Vitellianos  obruebant  .  .  .  ni  revolsas  undique 
statuas,  decora  maiorum,  in  ipso  aditu  obiecissent  .  .  .  vis 
propior  atque  acrior  ingruebat  .  .  .  quamnon  Porsena  dedita 
urbe  neque  Galli  temerare potuissent .  .  .  inrumpunt  Vitelliani 
et  cuncta  sanguine  ferro  flammisque  miscent.  We  seem  to 
be  present  once  more  at  that  terrible  night  hi  Troy  — 

Vestibulum  ante  ipsum  primoque  in  limine  Pyrrhus  .  .  . 
Evado  ad  summi  fastigia  culminis  .  .  . 

.  .  .  turres  ac  tecta  domorum 
Culmina  convellunt  .  .  . 

.  .  .  veterum  decora  altaparentum 
Devolvunt  .  .  .  nee  saxa,  nee  ullum 
Telorum  interea  cessat  genus  .  .  . 

.  .  .  armorumque  ingruit  horror  .  .  . 

...<?/  tarn  per  moenia  clarior  ignis 
Auditur,  propiusque  aestus  incendia  volvunt  .  .  . 
Quos  neque  Tydides,  nee  Larissaeus  Achilles, 
Non  anni  domuere  decent,  non  mille  carinae  .  .  . 
Fit  via  vi ;  rumpunt  aditus  primosque  trucidant 
Inmissi  Danai,  et  late  loca  milite  complent. 

These  quotations  indicate  strikingly  enough  the  way  in 
which  Tacitus  is  steeped  in  the  Virgilian  manner  and 
diction.  The  whole  passage  must  be  read  continuously  to 


220  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

realise  the  immense  skill  with  which   he  uses   it,  and  the 
tragic  height  it  adds  to  the  narrative. 

Nor  is  the  deep  gloom  of  his  history,  though  adorned 
with  the  utmost  brilliance  of  rhetoric,  lightened  by  any 
belief  in  Providence  or  any  distinct  hope  for  the  future. 
The  artificial  optimism  of  the  Stoics  is  alien  from  his  whole 
temper;  and  his  practical  acquiescence  in  the  existing 
system  under  the  reign  of  Domitian  only  added  bitterness 
to  his  inward  revolt  from  it.  The  phrases  of  religion  are 
merely  used  by  him  to  darken  the  shades  of  his  narrative ; 
Deum  ira  in  rent  Romanam,  one  of  the  most  striking  of 
them,  might  almost  be  taken  as  a  second  title  for  his 
history.  On  the  very  last  page  of  the  Annals  he  concludes  a 
brief  notice  of  the  ruin  and  exile  of  Cassius  Asclepiodotus, 
whose  crime  was  that  he  had  not  deserted  an  unfortunate 
friend,  with  the  striking  words,  "  Such  is  the  even-handed- 
ness  of  Heaven  towards  good  and  evil  conduct."  Even 
his  praises  of  the  government  of  Trajan  are  half-hearted 
and  incredulous ;  "  the  rare  happiness  of  a  time  when  men 
may  think  what  they  will,  and  say  what  they  think,"  is  to 
his  mind  a  mere  interlude,  a  brief  lightening  of  the  dark- 
ness before  it  once  more  descends  on  a  world  where  the 
ambiguous  power  of  fate  or  chance  is  the  only  permanent 
ruler,  and  where  the  gods  intervene,  not  to  protect,  but  only 
to  avenge. 


JV. 


.JUVENAL,  THE  YOUNGER  PLINY,   SUETON10US  :     DECAY  OF 
CLASSICAL  LATIN. 

FROM  the  name  of  Tacitus  that  of  Juvenal  is  inseparable. 
The  pictures  drawn  of  the  Empire  by  the  historian  and  the 
satirist  are  in  such  striking  accordance  that  they  create 
a  greater  plausibility  for  the  common  view  they  hold  than 
could  be  given  by  any  single  representation ;  and  while 
Juvenal  lends  additional  weight  and  colour  to  the  Tacitean 
presentment  of  the  imperial  legend,  he  acquires  from  it 
in  return  an  importance  which  could  hardly  otherwise  have 
been  sustained  by  his  exaggerated  and  glaring  rhetoric. 

As  regards  the  life  and  personality  of  the  last  great 
Roman  satirist  we  are  in  all  but  total  ignorance.  Several 
lives  of  him  exist  which  are  confused  and  contradictory  in 
detail.  He  was  born  at  Aquinum,  probably  in  the  reign 
of  Nero ;  an  inscription  on  a  little  temple  of  Ceres,  dedi- 
cated by  him  there,  indicates  that  he  had  served  in  the 
army  as  commander  of  a  Dalmatian  cohort,  and  was  super- 
intendent (as  one  of  the  chief  men  of  the  town)  of  the 
civic  worship  paid  to  Vespasian  after  his  deification.  The 
circumstance  of  his  banishment  for  offence  given  to  an 
actor  who  was  high  in  favour  with  the  Emperor  is  well 
authenticated ;  but  neither  its  place  nor  its  time  can  be 
fixed.  It  appears  from  the  Satires  themselves  that  they 
were  written  late  in  life ;  we  are  informed  that  he  reached 
his  eightieth  year,  and  lived  into  the  reign  of  Antoninus 


222  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

Pius.  Martial,  by  whom  he  is  repeatedly  mentioned, 
alludes  to  him  only  as  a  rhetorician,  not  as  a  satirist. 
The  sixteen  satires  (of  which  the  last  is,  perhaps,  not 
genuine)  were  published  at  intervals  under  Trajan  and 
Hadrian.  They  fall  into  two  groups ;  the  first  nine,  which 
are  at  once  the  most  powerful  and  the  least  agreeable, 
being  separated  by  a  considerable  interval  of  years  from  the 
others,  in  which  a  certain  softening  of  tone  and  a  tendency 
to  dwell  on  the  praise  of  virtue  more  than  on  the  ignoble 
details  of  vice  is  united  with  a  failing  power  that  marks 
the  approach  of  senility. 

Juvenal  is  the  most  savage  —  one  might  almost  say  the 
most  brutal  —  of  all  the  Roman  satirists.  Lucilius,  when 
he  "scourged  the  town,"  did  so  in  the  high  spirits  and 
voluble  diction  of  a  comparatively  simple  age.  Horace 
soon  learned  to  drop  the  bitterness  which  appears  in  his 
earlier  satires,  and  to  make  them  the  vehicle  for  his  gentle 
wisdom  and  urbane  humour.  The  writing  of  Persius  was 
that  of  a  student  who  gathered  the  types  he  satirised 
from  books  rather  than  from  life.  Juvenal  brought  to  his 
task  not  only  a  wide  knowledge  of  the  world  —  or,  at  least, 
of  the  world  of  the  capital  —  but  a  singular  power  of 
mordant  phrase,  and  a  mastery  over  crude  and  vivid 
effect  that  keeps  the  reader  suspended  between  disgust 
and  admiration.  In  the  commonplaces  of  morality,  though 
often  elevated  and  occasionally  noble,  he  does  not  show 
any  exceptional  power  or  insight ;  but  his  graphic  realism, 
combined  (as  realism  often  is)  with  a  total  absence  of  all 
but  the  grimmest  forms  of  humour,  makes  his  verses  cut 
like  a  knife.  Facit  indignatio  versum,  he  truly  says  of  his 
own  work ;  with  far  less  flexibility,  he  has  all  the  remorse- 
lessness  of  Swift.  That  singular  product  of  the  last  days 
of  paganism,  the  epigrammatist  Palladas  of  Alexandria,  is 
the  only  ancient  author  who  shows  the  same  spirit.  Of 
his  earlier  work  the  second  and  ninth  satires,  and  a  great 
part  of  the  sixth,  have  a  cold  prurience  and  disgustingness 


IV.]  Juvenal.  223 

of  detail,  that  even  Swift  only  approaches  at  his  worst 
moments.  Yet  the  sixth  satire,  at  all  events,  is  an  undeni- 
able masterpiece ;  however  raw  the  colour,  however  exag- 
gerated the  drawing,  his  pictures  of  Roman  life  have  a 
force  that  stamps  them  permanently  on  the  imagination ; 
his  Legend  of  Bad  Women,  as  this  satire  might  be  called, 
has  gone  far  to  make  history. 

It  is  in  the  third  satire  that  his  peculiar  gift  of  vivid 
painting  finds  its  best  and  easiest  scope.  In  this  elaborate 
indictment  of  the  life  of  the  capital,  put  into  the  mouth 
of  a  man  who  is  leaving  it  for  a  little  sleepy  provincial 
town,  he  draws  a  picture  of  the  Rome  he  knew,  its  social 
life  and  its  physical  features,  its  everyday  sights  and  sounds, 
that  brings  it  before  us  more  clearly  and  sharply  than  even 
the  Rome  of  Horace  or  Cicero.  The  drip  of  the  water 
from  the  aqueduct  that  passed  over  the  gate  from  which 
the  dusty  squalid  Appian  Way  stretched  through  its  long 
suburb;  the  garret  under  the  tiles  where,  just  as  now, 
the  pigeons  sleeked  themselves  in  the  sun  and  the  rain 
drummed  on  the  roof;  the  narrow  crowded  streets,  half 
choked  with  the  builders'  carts,  ankle-deep  in  mud,  and 
the  pavement  ringing  under  the  heavy  military  boots  of 
guardsmen ;  the  tavern  waiters  trotting  along  with  a  pyra- 
mid of  hot  dishes  on  their  head ;  the  flowerpots  falling 
from  high  window  ledges ;  night,  with  the  shuttered  shops, 
the  silence  broken  by  some  sudden  street  brawl,  the  dark- 
ness shaken  by  a  flare  of  torches  as  some  great  man, 
wrapped  in  his  scarlet  cloak,  passes  along  from  a  dinner- 
party with  his  long  train  of  clients  and  slaves  :  these  scenes 
live  for  us  in  Juvenal,  and  are  perhaps  the  picture  of 
ancient  Rome  that  is  most  abidingly  impressed  on  our 
memory.  The  substance  of  the  satire  is  familiar  to  English 
readers  from  the  fine  copy  of  Johnson,  whose  London 
follows  it  closely,  and  is  one  of  the  ablest  and  most 
animated  modern  imitations  of  a  classical  original.  The 
same  author's  noble  poem  on  the  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes 


224  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

is  a  more  free,  but  equally  spirited  rendering  of  the  tenth 
satire,  which  stands  at  the  head  of  the  later  portion  of 
Juvenal's  work.  In  this,  and  in  those  of  the  subsequent 
satires  which  do  not  show  traces  of  declining  power,  notably 
the  eleventh  and  thirteenth,  the  rhetoric  is  less  gaudy 
and  the  thought  rises  to  a  nobler  tone.  The  fine  passage 
at  the  end  of  the  tenth  satire,  where  he  points  out  what 
it  is  permitted  mankind  to  pray  for,  and  that  in  the  thir- 
teenth, where  he  paints  the  torments  of  conscience  in  the 
unpunished  sinner,  have  something  in  them  which  combines 
the  lofty  ardour  of  Lucretius  with  the  subtle  psychological 
insight  of  Horace,  and  to  readers  in  all  ages  have  been, 
as  they  still  remain,  a  powerful  influence  over  conduct. 
Equally  elevated  in  tone,  and  with  a  temperate  gravity 
peculiar  to  itself,  is  the  part  of  the  fourteenth  satire  which 
deals  with  the  education  of  the  young.  We  seem  to  hear 
once  more  in  it  the  enlightened  eloquence  of  Quintilian ; 
in  the  famous  Maxima  debetur  puero  reverentia  he  sums  up 
in  a  single  memorable  phrase  the  whole  spirit  of  the 
instructor  and  the  moralist.  The  allusions  to  childhood 
here  and  elsewhere  show  Juvenal  on  his  most  pleasing 
side  ;  his  rhetorical  vices  had  not  infected  the  real  simplicity 
of  his  nature,  or  his  admiration  for  goodness  and  innocence. 
In  his  power  over  trenchant  expression  he  rivals  Tacitus 
himself.  Some  of  his  phrases,  like  the  one  just  quoted,  have 
obtained  a  world-wide  currency,  and  even  reached  the 
crowning  honour  of  habitual  misquotation;  his  Hoc  volo 
sic  iubco,  his  Mens  sana  in  corpore  sano,  his  Quis  custodiei 
ipsos  custodes  ?  are  more  familiar  than  all  but  the  best-known 
lines  of  Virgil  and  Horace.  But  perhaps  his  most  charac- 
teristic lines  are  rather  those  where  his  moral  indignation 
breaks  forth  in  a  sort  of  splendid  violence  quite  peculiai 
to  himself ;  lines  like  — 

Et propter  vitam  vivendi  perdere  causas, 
or  — 

Magnaque  numinibus  vota  exaudita  maKgnis, 


IV.]  The   Younger  Pliny.  225 

in  which  the  haughty  Roman   language   is   still  used  with 
unimpaired  weight  and  magnificence. 

To  pass  from  Juvenal  to  the  other  distinguished  con- 
temporary of  Tacitus,  the  younger  Pliny,  is  like  exchanging 
the  steaming  atmosphere  and  gorgeous  colours  of  a  hot- 
house for  the  commonplace  trimness  of  a  suburban  garden. 
The  nephew  and  adopted  son  of  his  celebrated  uncle,  Pliny 
had  received  from  his  earliest  years  the  most  elaborate 
training  which  ever  fell  to  the  lot  of  mediocrity.  His 
uncle's  death  left  him  at  the  age  of  seventeen  already  a 
finished  pedant.  The  story  which  he  tells,  with  obvious 
self-satisfaction,  of  how  he  spent  the  awful  night  of  the 
eruption  of  Vesuvius  in  making  extracts  from  Livy  for  his 
commonplace  book,  sets  the  whole  man  before  us.  He 
became  a  successful  pleader  in  the  courts,  and  passed 
through  the  usual  public  offices  up  to  the  consulate.  At 
the  age  of  fifty  he  was  imperial  legate '  of  Bithynia :  the 
extant  official  correspondence  between  him  and  the  Emperor 
during  this  governorship  shows  him  still  unchanged  ;  upright 
and  conscientious,  but  irresolute,  pedantic,  and  totally 
unable  to  think  and  act  for  himself  in  any  unusual  circum- 
stances. The  contrast  between  Pliny's  fidgety  indecision 
and  the  quiet  strength  and  inexhaustible  patience  of  Trajan, 
though  scarcely  what  Pliny  meant  to  bring  out,  is  the 
first  and  last  impression  conveyed  to  us  by  this  curious 
correspondence.  The  nine  books  of  his  private  letters, 
though  prepared,  and  in  many  cases  evidently  written  for 
publication,  give  a  varied  and  interesting  picture  of  the 
time.  Here,  too,  the  character  of  the  writer  in  its  virtues 
and  its  weakness  is  throughout  unmistakeable.  Pliny,  the 
noble-minded  citizen, — Pliny,  the  munificent  patron, — Pliny, 
the  eminent  man  of  letters,  —  Pliny,  the  affectionate  husband 
and  humane  master,  —  Pliny,  the  man  of  principle,  is  in  his 
various  phases  the  real  subject  of  the  whole  collection. 
His  opinions  are  always  just  and  elegant ;  few  writers  can 
express  truisms  with  greater  fervour.  The  letters  to  Tacitus^ 
Q 


226  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

with  whom  he  was  throughout  life  in  close  intimacy,  are 
among  the  most  interesting  and  the  fullest  of  unintentional 
humour.  Tacitus  was  the  elder  of  the  two;  and  Pliny, 
"  when  very  young  "  —  the  words  are  his  own,  —  had  chosen 
him  as  his  model  and  sought  to  follow  his  fame.  "  There 
were  then  many  writers  of  brilliant  genius ;  but  you,"  he 
writes  to  Tacitus,  "  so  strong  was  the  affinity  of  our  natures, 
seemed  to  me  at  once  the  easiest  to  imitate  and  the  most 
worthy  of  imitation.  Now  we  are  named  together;  both 
of  us  have,  I  may  say,  some  name  in  literature,  for,  as 
I  include  myself,  I  must  be  moderate  in  my  praise  of 
you."  This  to  the  author  who  had  already  published  the 
Histories!  Before  so  exquisite  a  self-revelation  criticism 
itself  is  silenced. 

The  cult  of  Ciceronianism  established  by  Quintilian  is 
the  real  origin  of  the  collection  of  Pliny's  Letters.  Cicero 
and  Pliny  had  many  weaknesses  and  some  virtues  in 
common,  and  the  desire  of  emulating  Cicero,  which  Pliny 
openly  and  repeatedly  expresses,  had  a  considerable  effect 
in  exaggerating  his  weaknesses.  Cicero  was  vain,  quick- 
tempered, excitable ;  his  sensibilities  were  easily  moved, 
and  found  natural  and  copious  expression  in  the  language 
of  which  he  was  a  consummate  master.  Pliny,  the  most 
steady-going  of  mankind,  sets  himself  to  imitate  this  ex- 
citable temperament  with  the  utmost  seriousness ;  he  culti- 
vates sensibility,  he  even  cultivates  vanity.  His  elaborate 
and  graceful  descriptions  of  scenery  —  the  fountain  of  Cli- 
tumnus  or  the  villa  overlooking  the  Tiber  valley  —  are  no 
more  consciously  insincere  than  his  tears  over  the  death 
of  friends,  or  the  urgency  with  which  he  begs  his  wife 
to  write  to  him  from  the  country  twice  a  day.  But  these 
fine  feelings  are  meant  primarily  to  impress  the  public ; 
and  a  public  which  could  be  impressed  by  the  spectacle 
of  a  man  giving  a  dinner-party,  and  actually  letting  his 
untitled  guests  drink  the  same  wine  that  was  being  drunk  at 
the  head  of  the  table,  put  little  check  upon  lapses  of  taste. 


IV.]  The   Younger  Pliny.  227 

Yet  with  all  his  affectations  and  fatuities,  Pliny  compels 
respect,  and  even  a  measure  of  admiration,  by  the  real 
goodness  of  his  character.  Where  a  good  life  is  lived,  it 
hardly  becomes  us  to  be  too  critical  of  motives  and  springs 
of  action ;  and  in  Pliny's  case  the  practice  of  domestic  and 
civic  virtue  was  accompanied  by  a  considerable  literary 
gift.  Had  we  a  picture  drawn  with  equal  copiousness  and 
grace  of  the  Rome  of  Marcus  Aurelius  half  a  century  later, 
it  would  be  a  priceless  addition  to  history.  Pliny's  world  — 
partly  because  it  is  presented  with  such  rich  detail  —  reminds 
us,  more  than  that  of  any  other  period  of  Roman  history, 
of  the  society  of  our  own  day.  To  pass  from  Cicero's  letters 
to  his  is  curiously  like  passing  from  the  eighteenth  to  the 
nineteenth  century.  In  other  respects,  indeed,  they  have 
what  might  be  called  an  eighteenth  century  flavour.  Some 
of  the  more  elaborate  of  them  would  fall  quite  naturally 
into  place  among  the  essays  of  the  Spectator  or  the  Rambler; 
in  many  others  the  combination  of  thin  and  lucid  common- 
sense  with  a  vein  of  calculated  sensibility  can  hardly  be 
paralleled  till  we  reach  the  age  of  Rousseau. 

Part  of  this  real  or  assumed  sensibility  was  the  interest  in 
scenery  and  the  beauties  of  nature,  which  in  Pliny,  as  in  the 
eighteenth  century  authors,  is  cultivated  for  its  own  sake  as 
an  element  in  self-culture.  In  the  words  with  which  he 
winds  up  one  of  the  most  elaborate  of  his  descriptive  pieces, 
that  on  the  lake  of  Vadimo  in  Tuscany  —  Me  nihil  aeque  ac 
naturae  opera  delectant — there  is  an  accent  which  hardly 
recurs  till  the  age  of  the  Seasons  and  of  Gray's  Letters. 
Like  Gray,  Pliny  took  a  keen  pleasure  in  exploring  the 
more  romantic  districts  of  his  country ;  his  description  of 
the  lake  in  the  letter  just  mentioned  is  curiously  like 
passages  from  the  journal  in  which  Gray  records  his 
discovery  —  for  it  was  little  less  —  of  Thirlmere  and  Der 
wentwater.  He  views  the  Clitumnus  with  the  eye  of  an 
accomplished  landscape-gardener;  he  notes  the  cypresses 
on  the  hill,  the  ash  and  poplar  groves  by  the  water's  edge ; 


228  Latin  Literature.  [Ill 

he  counts  the  shining  pebbles  under  the  clear  ice-cold 
water,  and  watches  the  green  reflections  of  the  overhanging 
trees ;  and  finally,  as  Thomson  or  Cowper  might  have 
done,  mentions  the  abundance  of  comfortable  villas  as  the 
last  charm  of  the  landscape. 

The  munificent  benefactions  of  Pliny  to  his  native  town 
of  Comum,  and  his  anxiety  that,  instead  of  sending  its  most 
promising  boys  to  study  at  Milan  —  only  thirty  miles  off  —  it 
should  provide  for  them  at  home  what  would  now  be  called 
a  university  education,  are  among  the  many  indications 
which  show  us  how  Rome  was  diffusing  itself  over  Italy, 
as  Italy  was  over  the  Latin-speaking  provinces.  Under 
Hadrian  and  the  Antonines  this  process  went  on  with  even 
growing  force.  Country  life,  or  that  mixture  of  town  and 
country  life  afforded  by  the  small  provincial  towns,  came 
to  be  more  and  more  of  a  fashion,  and  the  depopulation  of 
the  capital  had  made  insensible  progress  long  before  the 
period  of  renewed  anarchy  that  followed  the  assassination 
of  Commodus.  Whether  the  rapid  decay  of  Latin 
literature  which  took  place  after  the  death  of  Pliny  and 
Tacitus  was  connected  with  this  weakening  of  the  central 
life  of  Rome,  is  a  question  to  which  we  hardly  can  hazard 
a  definite  answer.  Under  the  three  reigns  which  succeeded 
that  of  Trajan,  a  period  of  sixty-four  years  of  internal  peace, 
of  beneficent  rule,  of  enlightened  and  humane  legislation, 
the  cultured  society  shown  to  us  in  Pliny's  Letters  as  diffused 
all  over  Italy  remained  strangely  silent.  Of  all  the  streams 
of  tradition  which  descended  on  this  age,  the  schools  of 
law  and  grammar  alone  kept  their  course ;  the  rest  dwindle 
away  and  disappear.  Sixty  years  pass  without  a  single 
poet  or  historian,  even  of  the  second  rate ;  one  or  two 
eminent  jurists  share  the  field  with  one  or  two  incon- 
siderable extract-makers  and  epitomators,  who  barely  rise 
out  of  the  common  herd  of  undistinguished  grammarians. 
Among  the  obscure  poets  mentioned  by  Pliny,  the  name  of 
Vergilius  Romanus  may  excite  a  momentary  curiosity ;  he 


IV,]  Suetonius.  229 

was  the  author  of  Terentian  comedies,  which  probably  did 
not  long  survive  the  private  recitations  for  which  they 
were  composed.  The  epitome  of  the  History  of  Pompeius 
Trogus,  made  by  the  otherwise  unknown  Marcus  Junianus 
Justinus,  has  been  already  mentioned ;  like  the  brief  and 
poorly  executed  abridgment  of  Livy  by  Julius  or  Lucius 
Annaeus  Florus  (one  of  the  common  text-books  of  the 
Middle  Ages),  it  is  probably  to  be  placed  under  Hadrian. 
Javolenus  Priscus,  a  copious  and  highly  esteemed  juridical 
writer,  and  head  of  one  of  the  two  great  schools  of  Roman 
jurisprudence,  is  best  remembered  by  the  story  of  his  witty 
interruption  at  a  public  recitation,  which  Pliny  (part  of 
whose  character  it  was  to  joke  with  difficulty)  tells  with  a 
scandalised  gravity  even  more  amusing  than  the  story  itself. 
His  successor  as  head  of  the  school,  Salvius  Julianus,  was 
of  equal  juristic  distinction ;  his  codification  of  praetorian 
law  received  imperial  sanction  from  Hadrian,  and  became 
the  authorised  civil  code.  He  was  one  of  the  instructors  of 
Marcus  Aurelius.  The  wealth  he  acquired  by  his  profession 
was  destined,  in  the  Grange  revolutions  of  human  affairs, 
to  be  the  purchase-money  of  the  Empire  for  his  great- 
grandson,  Didius  Julianus,  when  it  was  set  up  at  auction  by 
the  praetorian  guards.  More  eminent  as  a  man  of  letters 
than  either  of  these  is  their  contemporary  Gaius,  whose 
Institutes  of  Civil  Law,  published  at  the  beginning  of  the 
reign  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  have  ever  since  remained  one  of 
the  foremost  manuals  of  Roman  jurisprudence. 

But  the  literary  poverty  of  this  age  in  Latin  writing  is 
most  strikingly  indicated  by  merely  naming  its  principal 
author.  At  any  previous  period  the  name  of  Gaius  Suetonius 
Tranquillus  would  have  been  low  down  in  the  second  rank  : 
here  it  rises  to  the  first ;  nor  is  there  any  other  name  which 
fairly  equals  his,  either  in  importance  or  in  interest.  The 
son  of  an  officer  of  the  thirteenth  legion,  Suetonius  practised 
in  early  life  as  an  advocate,  subsequently  became  one  of 
Hadrian's  private  secretaries,  and  devoted  his  later  years  to 


230  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

literary  research  and  compilation,  somewhat  in  the  mannei, 
though  without  the  encyclopedic  scope,  of  Varro.  In  his 
youth  he  had  been  an  intimate  friend  of  the  younger  Pliny, 
who  speaks  in  high  terms  of  his  learning  and  integrity. 
The  greater  part  of  his  voluminous  writings  are  lost ;  they 
included  many  works  on  grammar,  rhetoric,  and  archae- 
ology, and  several  on  natural  history  and  physical  science. 
Fragments  survive  of  his  elaborate  treatise  De  Vint 
Illustribus,  an  exhaustive  history  of  Latin  literature  up  to 
his  own  day :  excerpts  made  from  it  by  St.  Jerome  in  his 
Chronicle  are  the  source  from  which  much  of  our  informa- 
tion as  to  Latin  authors  is  derived,  and  several  complete 
lives  have  been  prefixed  to  manuscripts  of  the  works  of  the 
respective  authors,  and  thus  independently  preserved. 
But  his  most  interesting,  and  probably  his  most  valuable 
work,  the  Lives  of  the  Twelve  Caesars,  has  made  him 
one  of  the  most  widely  known  of  the  later  classical 
writers.  It  was  published  under  Hadrian  in  the  year 
1 20,  and  dedicated  to  his  praetorian  prefect,  Septicius 
Clarus.  Tacitus  (perhaps  because  he  was  still  alive)  is 
never  mentioned,  and  not  certainly  made  use  of.  Both 
authors  had  access,  in  the  main,  to  the  same  materials  ;  but 
the  confidential  position  of  Suetonius  as  Hadrian's  secretary 
no  doubt  increased  his  natural  tendency  to  collect  stories 
and  preserve  all  sorts  of  trivial  or  scandalous  gossip,  rather 
than  make  any  attempt  to  write  serious  history.  It  is  just 
this,  however,  which  gives  unique  interest  and  value  to  the 
Lives  of  the  Caesars.  We  can  spare  political  insight  or 
consecutive  arrangement  in  an  author  who  is  so  lavish  in 
the  personal  detail  that  makes  much  of  the  life  of  history : 
who  tells  us  the  colour  of  Caesar's  eyes,  who  quotes  from 
a.  dozen  private  letters  of  Augustus,  who  shows  us  Caligula 
shouting  to  the  moon  from  his  palace  roof,  and  Nero 
lecturing  on  the  construction  of  the  organ.  There  perhaps 
never  was  a  series  of  biographies  so  crammed  with  anecdote. 
Nor  is  the  style  without  a  certain  sort  of  merit,  from  its 


IV.]  Aulus  Gellius.  231 

entire  and  unaffected  simplicity.  After  all  the  fine  writing 
of  the  previous  century  it  is,  for  a  little  while,  almost  a 
relief  to  come  on  an  author  who  is  frankly  without  style, 
and  says  what  he  has  to  say  straightforwardly.  But  it  is 
only  the  absorbing  interest  of  the  matter  which  makes  this 
kind  of  writing  long  endurable.  It  is,  in  truth,  the  beginning 
of  barbarism  ;  and  Suetonius  measures  more  than  half  the 
distance  from  the  fine  familiar  prose  of  the  Golden  Age  to 
the  base  jargon  of  the  authors  of  the  Augustan  History  a 
century  and  a  half  later,  under  Diocletian. 

Amid  the  decay  of  imagination  and  of  the  higher  qualities 
of  style,  the  tradition  of  industry  and  accuracy  to  some 
degree  survived.  The  biographies  of  Suetonius  show  con- 
siderable research  and  absolute  candour ;  and  the  same 
qualities,  though  united  with  a  feebler  judgment,  appear  in 
the  interesting  miscellanies  of  his  younger  contemporary, 
Aulus  Gellius.  This  work,  published  under  the  fanciful 
title  of  Noctes  Atticae,  is  valuable  at  once  as  a  collection 
of  extracts  from  older  writers  and  as  a  source  of  information 
regarding  the  knowledge  and  studies  of  his  own  age.  Few 
authors  are  more  scrupulously  accurate  in  quotation ;  and 
by  this  conscientiousness,  as  well  as  by  his  real  admiration 
for  the  great  writers,  he  shows  the  pedantry  of  the  time  on 
its  most  pleasing  side. 

The  twenty  books  of  the  Noctes  Atticae  were  the  compi- 
lation of  many  years  ;  but  the  title  was  chosen  from  the  fact 
of  the  work  having  been  begun  during  a  winter  spent  by 
the  author  at  Athens,  when  about  thirty  years  of  age.  He 
was  only  one  among  a  number  of  his  countrymen,  old  as 
well  as  young,  who  found  the  atmosphere  of  that  university 
town  more  congenial  to  study  than  the  noisy,  unhealthy, 
and  crowded  capital,  or  than  the  quiet,  but  ill-equipped, 
provincial  towns  of  Italy.  Athens  once  more  became,  for 
a  short  time,  the  chief  centre  of  European  culture.  Herodes 
Atticus,  that  remarkable  figure  who  traced  his  descent  to 
the  very  beginnings  of  Athenian  history  and  the  semi- 


232  Latin  Literature.  [HI. 

mythical  Aeacidae  of  Aegina,  and  who  was  consul  of  Rome 
under  Antoninus  Pihs,  had  taken  up  his  permanent  residence 
in  his  native  town,  and  devoted  his  vast  wealth  to  the 
architectural  embellishment  of  Athens,  and  to  a  munificent 
patronage  of  letters.  Plutarch  and  Arrian,  the  two  most 
eminent  authors  of  the  age,  both  spent  much  of  their  time 
there ;  and  the  Emperor  Hadrian,  by  his  repeated  and 
protracted  visits  —  he  once  lived  at  Athens  for  three  years 
together  —  established  the  reputation  of  the  city  as  a  fashion- 
able resort,  and  superintended  the  building  of  an  entirely 
new  quarter  to  accommodate  the  great  influx  of  permanent 
residents.  The  accident  of  imperial  patronage  doubtless 
added  force  to  the  other  causes  which  made  Greek  take 
fresh  growth,  and  become  for  a  time  almost  the  dominant 
language  of  the  Empire.  Though  two  centuries  were  still 
to  pass  before  the  foundation  of  Constantinople,  the  centre 
of  gravity  of  the  huge  fabric  of  government  was  already 
passing  from  Italy  to  the  Balkan  peninsula,  and  Italy 
itself  was  becoming  slowly  but  surely  one  of  the  Western 
provinces.  Nature  herself  seemed  to  have  fixed  the  Eastern 
limit  of  the  Latin  language  at  the  Adriatic,  and  even  in 
Italy  Greek  was  equally  familiar  with  Latin  to  the  educated 
classes.  Suetonius,  Fronto,  Hadrian  himself,  wrote  in 
Latin  and  Greek  indifferently.  Marcus  Aurelius  used  Greek 
by  preference,  even  when  writing  of  his  predecessors  and 
the  events  of  Roman  history.  From  Plutarch  to  Lucian 
the  Greek  authors  completely  predominate  over  the  Latin. 
In  the  sombre  century  which  followed,  both  Greek  and 
Latin  literature  were  all  but  extinguished ;  the  partial 
revival  of  the  latter  in  the  fourth  century  was  artificial  and 
short-lived  ;  and  though  the  tradition  of  the  classical  manner 
took  long  to  die  away,  the  classical  writers  themselves 
completely  cease  with  Suetonius.  A  new  Latin,  that  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  was  already  rising  to  take  the  place  of 
the  speech  handed  down  by  the  Republic  to  the  Empire. 


V. 

THE   ELOCUTIO    NOVELLA. 

THOUGH  the  partial  renascence  in  art  and  letters  which 
took  place  in  the  long  peaceful  reign  of  Hadrian  was  on  the 
whole  a  Greek,  or,  at  all  events,  a  Graeco-Roman  movement, 
an  attempt  at  least  towards  a  corresponding  movement  in 
purely  Latin  literature,  both  in  prose  and  verse,  was  made 
about  the  same  time,  and  might  have  had  important  results 
had  outward  circumstances  allowed  it  a  reasonable  chance 
of  development.  As  it  is,  Apuleius  and  Fronto  in  prose, 
and  the  new  school  of  poets,  of  whom  the  unknown  author 
of  the  Pervigilium  Veneris  is  the  most  striking  and  typical, 
represent  not  merely  a  fresh  refinement  in  the  artificial 
management  of  thought  and  language,  but  the  appearance 
on  the  surface  of  certain  native  qualities  in  Latin,  long 
suppressed  by  the  decisive  supremacy  of  the  manner 
established  as  classical  under  the  Republic,  but  throughout 
latent  in  the  structure  and  temperament  of  the  language. 
Just  when  Latin  seemed  to  be  giving  way  on  all  hands  to 
Greek,  the  signs  are  first  seen  of  a  much  more  momentous 
change,  the  rise  of  a  new  Latin,  which  not  only  became 
a  common  speech  for  all  Europe,  but  was  the  ground- 
work of  the  Romance  languages  and  of  half  a  dozen 
important  national  literatures.  The  decay  of  education, 
the  growth  of  vulgarisms,  and  the  degradation  of  the 
fine,  but  extremely  artificial,  literary  language  of  the 
classical  period,  went  hand  in  hand  towards  this  change 

233 


234  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

with  the  extreme  subtleties  and  refinements  introduced  by 
the  ablest  of  the  new  writers,  who  were  no  longer  content, 
like  Quintilian  and  Pliny,  to  rest  satisfied  with  the  manner 
and  diction  of  the  Golden  Age.  The  work  of  this  school 
of  authors  is  therefore  of  unusual  interest ;  for  they  may 
not  unreasonably  be  called  a  school,  as  working,  though 
unconsciously,  from  different  directions  towards  the  same 
common  end. 

The  theory  of  this  new  manner  has  had  considerable 
light  thrown  upon  it  by  the  fragments  of  the  works  of 
Marcus  Cornelius  Fronto,  recovered  early  in  the  present 
century  by  Angelo  Mai  from  palimpsests  in  the  Vatican 
and  Ambrosian  libraries  at  Rome  and  Milan.  Fronto  was 
the  most  celebrated  rhetorician  of  his  time,  and  exercised 
a  commanding  influence  on  literary  criticism.  The  reign 
of  the  Spanish  school  was  now  over ;  Fronto  was  of  African 
origin ;  and  though  it  does  not  follow  that  he  was  not  of 
pure  Roman  blood,  the  influence  of  a  semi-tropical  atmos- 
phere and  African  surroundings  altered  the  type,  and 
produced  a  new  strain,  which  we  can  trace  later  under 
different  forms  in  the  great  African  school  of  ecclesiastical 
writers  headed  by  Tertullian  and  Cyprian,  and  even  to  a 
modified  degree  in  Augustine  himself.  He  was  born  in 
the  Roman  colony  of  Cirta,  probably  a  few  years  after  the 
death  of  Quintilian.  He  rose  to  a  conspicuous  position  at 
Rome  under  Hadrian,  and  was  highly  esteemed  by  Marcus 
Antoninus,  who  not  only  elevated  him  to  the  consulship, 
but  made  him  one  of  the  principal  tutors  of  the  joint-heirs 
to  the  Empire,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  Lucius  Verus.  He 
died  a  few  years  before  Marcus  Aurelius.  The  recovered 
fragments  of  his  writings,  which  are  lamentably  scanty  and 
interrupted,  are  chiefly  from  his  correspondence  with  his 
two  imperial  pupils.  With  both  of  them,  and  Marcus 
Aurelius  especially,  he  continued  in  later  years  to  be  on 
the  most  intimate  and  affectionate  relations.  The  elderly 
rhetorician,  a  martyr,  as  he  keeps  complaining,  to  gout,  and 


V.J  Pronto.  235 

the  philosophic  Emperor  write  to  each  other  with  the 
effusiveness  of  two  school-girls.  It  is  impossible  to  suspect 
Marcus  Aurelius  of  insincerity,  and  it  is  easy  to  understand 
what  a  real  fervour  of  admiration  his  saintly  character  might 
awaken  in  any  one  who  had  the  privilege  of  watching  and 
aiding  its  development ;  but  the  endearments  exchanged  in 
the  letters  that  pass  between  "  my  dearest  master "  and 
"  my  life  and  lord  "  are  such  as  modern  taste  finds  it  hard 
to  sympathise  with,  or  even  to  understand. 

The  single  cause  for  complaint  that  Fronto  had  against 
his  pupil  was  that,  as  he  advanced  in  life,  he  gradually 
withdrew  from  the  study  of  literature  to  that  of  philosophy. 
To  Fronto,  literature  was  the  one  really  important  thing  in 
the  world ;  and  in  his  perpetual  recurrence  to  this  theme, 
he  finds  occasion  to  lay  down  in  much  detail  his  own 
literary  theories  and  his  canons  of  style.  The  Elocutio 
Novella,  which  he  considered  it  his  great  work  in  life  to 
expound  and  to  practise,  was  partly  a  return  upon  the 
style  of  the  older  Latin  authors,  partly  a  new  growth 
based,  as  theirs  had  been,  on  the  actual  language  of 
common  life.  The  prose  of  Cato  and  the  Gracchi  had 
been,  in  vocabulary  and  structure,  the  living  spoken 
language  of  the  streets  and  farms,  wrought  into  shape 
in  the  hands  of  men  of  powerful  genius.  To  give  fresh 
vitality  to  Latin,  Fronto  saw,  and  saw  rightly,  that  the 
same  process  of  literary  genius  working  on  living  material 
must  once  more  take  place.  His  mistake  was  in  fancy- 
ing it  possible  to  go  back  again  to  the  second  century 
before  Christ,  and  make  a  fresh  start  from  that  point  as 
though  nothing  had  happened  in  the  meantime.  In  our 
own  age  we  have  seen  a  somewhat  similar  fallacy  committed 
by  writers  who,  in  their  admiration  of  the  richness  and 
flexibility  of  Elizabethan  English,  have  tried  to  write  with 
the  same  copiousness  of  vocabulary  and  the  same  freedom 
of  structure  as  the  Elizabethans.  Between  these  and  their 
object  lies  an  insuperable  barrier,  the  formed  and  finished 


236  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

prose  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries ;  between 
Fronto  and  his  lay  the  whole  mass  of  what,  in  the  sustained 
and  secure  judgment  of  mankind,  is  the  classical  prose 
of  the  Latin  language,  from  Cicero  to  Tacitus.  In  the 
simplicity  which  he  pursued  there  was  something  ineradi- 
cably  artificial,  and  even  unnatural,  and  the  fresh  resources 
from  which  he  attempted  to  enrich  the  literary  language 
and  to  form  his  new  Latin  resembled,  to  use  his  own 
striking  simile,  the  exhausted  and  unwilling  population  from 
which  the  legions  could  only  now  be  recruited  by  the  most 
drastic  conscription. 

Yet  if  Fronto  hardly  succeeded  in  founding  a  new  Latin, 
he  was  a  powerful  influence  in  the  final  collapse  and  dis- 
appearance of  the  old.  His  reversion  to  the  style  and 
language  of  pre-Ciceronian  times  was  only  a  temporary 
fashion ;  but  in  the  general  decay  of  taste  and  learning  it 
was  sufficient  to  break  the  continuity  of  Latin  literature. 
The  bronze  age  of  Ennius  and  Cato  had  been  succeeded, 
in  a  broad  and  stately  development,  by  the  Golden  and 
Silver  periods.  Under  this  fresh  attack  the  Latin  of  the 
Silver  Age  breaks  up  and  goes  to  pieces,  and  the  failure  of 
Fronto  and  his  contemporaries  to  create  a  new  language 
opens  the  age  of  the  base  metals.  The  collapse  of  the 
imperial  system  after  the  death  of  Marcus  Aurelius  is  not 
more  striking  or  more  complete  than  the  collapse  of  litera- 
ture after  that  of  his  tutor. 

Of  the  actual  literary  achievement  of  this  remarkable 
critic,  when  he  turned  from  criticism  and  took  to  construc- 
tion, the  surviving  fragments  give  but  an  imperfect  idea. 
Most  of  the  fragments  are  from  private  letters ;  the  rest  are 
from  rhetorical  exercises,  including  those  of  the  so-called 
Principia  Historiae,  a  panegyric  upon  the  campaigns  and 
administration  of  Verus  in  the  Asiatic  provinces.  But  among 
the  letters  there  are  some  of  a  more  studied  eloquence, 
which  show  pretty  clearly  the  merits  and  defects  of  their 
author  as  a  writer.  In  narrative  he  is  below  mediocrity ; 


V.]  Pronto.  237 

his  attempt  to  tell  the  story  of  the  ring  of  Polycrates,  after 
all  allowance  is  made  for  its  having  been  first  told  by 
Herodotus,  is  incredibly  languid  and  tedious.  Where  his 
style  reaches  its  highest  level  of  force  and  refinement  is 
in  the  more  imaginative  passages,  and  in  the  occasional 
general  reflections  where  he  makes  the  thought  remarkable 
by  a  cadence  of  language  that  is  at  once  unexpected  and 
inevitable.  Novissimum  ho  mini  sapientiam  colenti  amiculum 
est glorias  cupido :  id  novissimum  exuitur  —  the  turn  of  phrase 
here  is  completely  different  from  the  way  in  which  Cicero 
or  Quintilian  would  have  expressed  the  same  idea.  In 
the  long  letter  urging  the  Emperor  to  take  a  brief  rest 
from  the  wearing  cares  of  government  during  a  few  days 
that  he  was  spending  at  a  little  seaside  town  in  Etruria, 
there  occurs  what  is,  perhaps,  the  most  characteristic  single 
passage  that  .could  be  quoted,  the  allegory  of  the  Creation 
of  Sleep.  "  Now,"  he  writes,  "  if  you  would  like  to  hear  a 
little  fable,  listen."  The  fable  which  he  proceeds  to  relate, 
in  its  delicacy  of  phrasing  and  its  curiously  romantic  flavour, 
has  received  an  admirable  and  sympathetic  rendering  from 
the  late  Mr.  Pater.*  Part  of  his  version  —  the  passage  is 
too  long  to  quote  in  full — will  show  more  clearly  than 
abstract  criticism  the  distinctively  romantic  or  mediaeval 
note  which,  except  in  so  far  as  it  had  been  anticipated  by 
the  genius  of  Plato  and  Virgil,  appears  now  in  literature 
almost  for  the  first  time. 

"  They  say  that  our  father  Jupiter,  when  he  ordered  the 
world  at  the  beginning,  divided  time  into  two  parts  exactly 
equal ;  the  one  part  he  clothed  with  light,  the  other  with 
darkness  ;  he  called  them  Day  and  Night ;  and  he  assigned 
rest  to  the  night  and  to  the  day  the  work  of  life.  At  that 
time  Sleep  was  not  yet  born,  and  men  passed  the  whole  of 
their  lives  awake  :  only,  the  quiet  of  the  night  was  ordained 
for  them,  instead  of  sleep.  But  it  came  to  pass,  little  by 
little,  being  that  the  minds  of  men  are  restless,  that  they 

*  Marius  the  Epicurean,  chap.  xiii. 


238  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

carried  on  their  business  alike  by  night  as  by  day,  and  gave 
no  part  at  all  to  repose.  .  .  .  Then  it  was  that  Jupiter  formed 
the  design  of  creating  Sleep;  and  he  added  him  to  the 
number  of  the  gods,  and  gave  him  the  charge  over  night  and 
rest,  putting  into  his  hands  the  keys  of  human  eyes.  With 
his  own  hands  he  mingled  the  juices  wherewith  Sleep  should 
soothe  the  hearts  of  mortals  —  herb  of  Enjoyment  and  herb 
of  Safety,  gathered  from  a  grove  in  Heaven ;  and,  from  the 
meadows  of  Acheron,  the  herb  of  Death ;  expressing  from 
it  one  single  drop  only,  no  bigger  than  a  tear  that  one 
might  hide.  'With  this  juice,'  he  said,  'pour  slumber  upon 
the  eyelids  of  mortals.  So  soon  as  it  hath  touched  them 
they  will  lay  themselves  down  motionless,  under  thy  power. 
But  be  not  afraid  :  they  will  revive,  and  in  a  while  stand 
up  again  upon  their  feet.'  After  that,  Jupiter  gave  wings  to 
Sleep,  attached,  not  to  his  heels  like  Mercury's,  but  to  his 
shoulders  like  the  wings  of  Love.  For  he  said,  '  It  becomes 
thee  not  to  approach  men's  eyes  as  with  the  noise  of  a 
chariot  and  the  rushing  of  a  swift  courser,  but  with  placid 
and  merciful  flight,  as  upon  the  wings  of  a  swallow  —  nay  ! 
not  so  much  as  with  the  fluttering  of  a  dove.'  " 

Alike  in  the  naive  and  almost  childlike  simplicity  of  its 
general  structure,  and  in  its  minute  and  intricate  ornament, 
like  that  of  a  diapered  wall  or  a  figured  tapestry,  where 
hardly  an  inch  of  space  is  ever  left  blank  —  this  new  style  is 
much  more  akin  to  the  manner  of  the  thirteenth  or  four- 
teenth century  than  to  the  classical.  A  similar  quality  is 
shown,  not  more  strikingly,  but  on  a  larger  scale  and  with  a 
more  certain  touch,  in  the  celebrated  prose  romance  of 
Fronto's  contemporary,  Lucius  Apuleius. 

Like  Fronto,  Apuleius  was  of  African  origin.  He  was 
born  at  the  Roman  colony  of  Madaura  in  Numidia,  and 
educated  at  Carthage,  from  which  he  proceeded  afterwards 
to  the  university  of  Athens.  The  epithets  of  semi-Numida 
and  semi-Gaetulus,  which  he  applies  to  himself,  indicate 
that  he  fully  felt  himself  to  belong  to  a  civilisation  which 


V.]  Apuleius.  239 

was  not  purely  European.  Together  with  the  Graeco-Syrian 
Lucian,  this  Romano-African  represents  the  last  extension 
which  ancient  culture  took  before  finally  fading  away  or 
becoming  absorbed  in  new  forms.  Both  were  by  profession 
travelling  lecturers ;  they  were  the  nearest  approach  which 
the  ancient  world  made  to  what  we  should  now  call  the 
higher  class  of  journalist.  Lucian,  in  his  later  life  —  like  a 
journalist  nowadays  who  should  enter  Parliament  —  com- 
bined his  profession  with  high  public  employment ;  but 
Apuleius,  so  far  as  is  known,  spent  all  his  life  in  writing  and 
lecturing.  Though  he  was  not  strictly  either  an  orator  or  a 
philosopher,  his  works  include  both  speeches  and  philosoph- 
ical treatises ;  but  his  chief  distinction  and  his  permanent 
interest  are  as  a  novelist  both  in  the  literal  and  in  the 
accepted  sense  of  the  word  —  a  writer  of  prose  romances  in 
which  he  carried  the  novella  elocutio  to  the  highest  point  it 
reached.  He  was  born  about  the  year  125  ;  the  Meta- 
morphoses, his  most  famous  and  his  only  extant  romance, 
was  written  at  Rome  before  he  was  thirty,  soon  after  he 
had  completed  his  course  of  study  at  Athens.  The  philo- 
sophical or  mystical  treatises  of  his  later  life,  On  the 
Universe,  On  the  God  of  Socrates,  On  Plato  and  his  Doctrine, 
do  not  rise  above  the  ordinary  level  of  the  Neo-Platonist 
school,  Platonism  half  understood,  mixed  with  fanciful 
Orientalism,  and  enveloped  in  a  maze  of  verbiage.  That 
known  as  the  Apologia,  an  elaborate  literary  amplification 
of  the  defence  which  he  had  to  make  before  the  proconsul 
of  Africa  against  an  accusation  of  dealing  in  magic,  is  the 
only  one  which  survives  of  his  oratorical  works ;  and  his 
miscellaneous  writings  on  many  branches  of  science  and 
natural  history,  which  are  conjectured  to  have  formed  a  sort 
of  encyclopedia  like  those  of  Celsus  and  Pliny,  are  all  but 
completely  lost :  but  the  Florida,  a  collection,  probably 
made  by  himself,  of  twenty-four  selected  passages  from  the 
public  lectures  which  he  delivered  at  Carthage,  give  an  idea 
«f  his  style  as  a  lecturer,  and  of  the  scope  and  variety  of 


240  Latin  Literature.  [Ill 

his  talent.  The  Ciceronian  manner  of  Qiintilian  and  his 
school  has  now  completely  disappeared.  The  new  style 
may  remind  one  here  and  there  of  Seneca,  but  the  re- 
semblance does  not  go  far.  Fronto,  who  speaks  of  Cicero 
with  grudging  and  lukewarm  praise,  regards  Seneca  as  on 
the  whole  the  most  corrupt  among  Roman  writers,  and 
Apuleius  probably  held  the  same  view.  He  produces  his 
rhetorical  effects,  not  by  daring  tropes  or  accumulations  of 
sonorous  phrases,  but  by  a  perpetual  refinement  of  diction 
which  keeps  curiously  weighing  and  rejecting  words,  and 
giving  every  other  word  an  altered  value  or  an  unaccustomed 
setting.  The  effect  is  like  that  of  strange  and  rather 
barbarous  jewellery.  A  remarkable  passage,  on  the  power 
of  sight  possessed  by  the  eagle,  may  be  cited  as  a  charac- 
teristic specimen  of  his  more  elaborate  manner.  Quum 
se  nubium  tenus  altissime  sublimavit,  he  writes,  evecta  alls 
totum  istud  spatium,  qua  pluitur  et  ningitur,  ultra  quod 
cacumen  nee  fulmini  nee  fulguri  locus  est,  in  ipso,  ut  ita 
dixerim,  solo  aetheris  et  fastigio  hiemis  .  .  .  nutu  dementi 
laevomim  vel  dextrorsurn  tola  mole  corporis  labitur  .  .  .  inde 
cuncta  despiciens,  ibidem  pinnarum  e minus  indefesso  remigio, 
ac  paulisper  cunctabundo  volatu  paene  eodem  loco  pendula  cir- 
cumtuetur  et quaerit quorsiis potissimum  inpraedam  superne  se 
proruat  fulminis  vice,  de  caelo  improvisa  simul  campis  pecua, 
simul  montibus  f eras,  simul  urbibus  homines,  uno  obtutu  sub 
eodem  impetu  cernens.  The  first  thing  that  strikes  a  reader 
accustomed  to  classical  Latin  in  a  passage  like  this  is  the 
short  broken  rhythms,  the  simple  organism  of  archaic  prose 
being  artificially  imitated  by  carefully  and  deliberately 
breaking  up  all  the  structure  which  the  language  had 
been  wrought  into  through  the  handling  of  centuries.  The 
next  thing  is  that  half  the  phrases  are,  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  word,  barely  Latin.  Apuleius  has  all  the  daring, 
though  not  the  genius,  of  Virgil  himself  in  inventing  new 
Latin  or  using  old  Latin  in  new  senses.  But  Virgil  is  old 
Latin  to  him  no  less  than  Ennius  or  Pacuvius ;  in  this  very 


V.]  Apuleius.  241 

passage,  with  its  elaborate  archaisms,  there  are  three  phrases 
taken  directly  from  the  first  book  of  the  Aeneid. 

In  the  Metamorphoses  the  elaboration  of  the  new  style 
culminates.  In  its  main  substance  this  curious  and  fantastic 
romance  is  a  translation  from  a  Grt  ek  original.  Its  precise 
relation  to  the  version  of  the  same  story,  extant  in  Greek 
under  the  name  of  Lucian,  has  given  rise  to  much  argu- 
ment, and  the  question  cannot  be  held  to  be  conclusively 
settled ;  but  the  theory  which  seems  to  have  most  in  its 
favour  is  that  both  are  versions  of  a  lost  Greek  original. 
Lucian  applied  his  limpid  style  and  his  uncommon  power 
of  narration  to  rewrite  what  was  no  doubt  a  ruder  and 
more  confused  story.  Apuleius  evidently  took  the  story  as 
a  mere  groundwork  which  he  might  overlay  with  his  own 
fantastic  embroidery.  He  was  probably  attracted  to  it  by 
the  supernatural  element,  which  would  appeal  strongly  to 
him,  not  merely  as  a  professed  mystic  and  a  dabbler  in 
magic,  but  as  a  decadent  whose  art  sought  out  strange  ex- 
periences and  romantic  passions  no  less  than  novel  rhythms 
and  exotic  diction.  Under  the  light  touch  of  Lucian  the 
supernaturalism  of  the  story  is  merely  that  of  a  fairy-tale, 
not  believed  in  or  meant  to  be  believed ;  in  the  Meta- 
morphoses a  brooding  sense  of  magic  is  over  the  whole 
narrative.  In  this  spirit  he  entirely  remodels  the  conclusion 
of  the  story.  The  whole  of  the  eleventh  book,  from  the 
vision  of  the  goddess,  with  which  it  opens,  to  the  reception 
of  the  hero  at  the  conclusion  into  the  fellowship  of  her 
holy  servants,  is  conceived  at  the  utmost  tension  of  mystical 
feeling.  "  With  stars  and  sea-winds  in  her  raiment,"  flower- 
crowned,  shod  with  victorious  palm,  clad,  under  the  dark 
splendours  of  her  heavy  pall,  in  shimmering  white  silk  shot 
with  saffron  and  rose  like  flame,  an  awful  figure  rises  out 
of  the  moonlit  sea  :  En  adsum,  comes  her  voice,  rerum 
natura  parens,  elementorum  omnium  domina,  seculorum 
progenies  initialis,  summa  numinum,  regina  manium,  prima 
caelitum,  deorum  dearumque  fades  uniformis,  quae  caeli 

R 


242  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

luminosa  culmina,  marts  salubria  flamina,  inferorum  de- 
plorata  silentia  nutibus  meis  dispense.  It  was  in  virtue  of 
such  passages  as  that  from  which  these  words  are  quoted 
that  Apuleius  came  to  be  regarded  soon  after  his  death  as 
an  incarnation  of  Antichrist,  sent  to  perplex  the  worshippers 
of  the  true  God.  Already  to  Lactantius  he  is  not  a  curious 
artist  in  language,  but  a  magician  inspired  by  diabolical 
agency;  St.  Augustine  tells  us  that,  like  Apollonius  of 
Tyana,  he  was  set  up  by  religious  paganism  as  a  rival  to 
Jesus  Christ. 

Of  the  new  elements  interwoven  by  Apuleius  in  the  story 
of  the  transformations  and  adventures  of  Lucius  of  Patrae 
(Lucius  of  Madaura,  he  calls  him,  thus  hinting,  to  the 
mingled  awe  and  confusion  of  his  readers,  that  the  events 
had  happened  to  himself),  the  fervid  religion  of  the  con- 
clusion is  no  doubt  historically  the  most  important ;  but 
that  which  made  it  universal  and  immortal  is  the  famous 
story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  which  fills  nearly  two  books  of 
the  Metamorphoses.  With  the  strangeness  characteristic 
of  the  whole  work,  this  wonderful  and  exquisitely  told  story 
is  put  in  the  mouth  of  a  half  crazy  and  drunken  old  woman, 
in  the  robbers'  cave  where  part  of  the  action  passes.  But 
her  first  half-dozen  words,  the  errant  in  quadam  civitate  rex 
et  regina,  lift  it  in  a  moment  into  the  golden  world  of  pure 
romance.  The  story  itself  is  in  its  constituent  elements  a 
well-known  specimen  of  the  marchen,  or  popular  tale,  which 
is  not  only  current  throughout  the  Aryan  peoples,  but  may 
be  traced  in  the  popular  mythology  of  all  primitive  races. 
It  is  beyond  doubt  in  its  essential  features  of  immemorial 
antiquity ;  but  what  is  unique  about  it  is  its  sudden  appear- 
ance in  literature  in  the  full  flower  of  its  most  elaborate 
perfection.  Before  Apuleius  there  is  no  trace  of  the  story 
in  Greek  or  Roman  writing ;  he  tells  it  with  a  daintiness 
of  touch  and  a  wealth  of  fanciful  ornament  that  have  left 
later  story-tellers  little  or  nothing  to  add.  The  version  by 
which  it  is  best  known  to  modern  readers,  that  in  the 


V.]  The  Pervigilium    Veneris.  243 

Earthly  Paradise,  while,  after  the  modern  poet's  manner, 
expanding  the  descriptions  for  their  own  sake,  follows 
Apuleius  otherwise  with  exact  fidelity. 

In  the  more  highly  wrought  episodes,  like  the  Cupid  and 
Psyche,  the  new  Latin  of  Apuleius  often  approximates 
nearly  to  assonant  or  rhymed  verse.  Both  rhyme  and 
assonance  were  to  be  found  in  the  early  Latin  which  he 
had  studied  deeply,  and  may  be  judged  from  incidental 
fragments  of  the  popular  language  never  to  have  wholly 
disappeared  from  common  use  during  the  classical  period. 
Virgil,  in  his  latest  work,  as  has  been  noticed,  shows  a 
tendency  to  experiment  in  combining  their  use  with  that 
of  the  Graeco-Latin  rhythms.  The  combination,  in  the 
writing  of  the  new  school,  of  a  sort  of  inchoate  verse  with 
an  elaborate  and  even  pedantic  prose  was  too  artificial  to 
be  permanent ;  but  about  the  same  time  attempts  were 
made  at  a  corresponding  new  style  in  regular  poetry. 
Rhymed  verse  as  such  does  not  appear  till  later ;  the  work 
of  the  novelli  poetae,  as  they  were  called  by  the  grammarians, 
partly  took  the  form  of  reversion  to  the  trochaic  metres 
which  were  the  natural  cadence  of  the  Latin  language, 
partly  of  fresh  experiments  in  hitherto  untried  metres,  in 
both  cases  with  a  large  employment  of  assonance,  and  the 
beginnings  of  an  accentual  as  opposed  to  a  quantitative 
treatment.  Of  these  experiments  few  have  survived;  the 
most  interesting  is  a  poem  of  remarkable  beauty  preserved 
in  the  Latin  Anthology  under  the  name  of  the  Pervigilium 
Veneris.  Its  author  is  unknown,  nor  can  its  date  be  de- 
termined with  certainty.  The  worship  of  Venus  Genetrix, 
for  whose  spring  festival  the  poem  is  written,  had  been 
revived  on  a  magnificent  scale  by  Hadrian ;  and  this  fact, 
together  with  the  internal  evidence  of  the  language,  make  it 
assignable  with  high  probability  to  the  age  of  the  Antonines. 
The  use  of  the  preposition  de,  almost  as  in  the  Romance 
languages,  where  case-inflexions  would  be  employed  in 
classical  Latin,  has  been  held  to  argue  an  African  origin; 


244  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

while  its  remarkable  mediaevalisms  have  led  some  critics, 
against  all  the  other  indications,  to  place  its  date  as  low  as 
the  fourth  or  even  the  fifth  century. 

The  Pervigilium  Veneris  is  written  in  the  trochaic  septe- 
narian  verse  which  had  been  freely  used  by  the  earliest 
Roman  poets,  but  had  since  almost  dropped  out  of  literary 
use.  With  the  revival  of  the  trochaic  movement  the  long 
divorce  between  metrical  stress  and  spoken  accent  begins 
to  break  down.  The  metre  is  indeed  accurate,  and  even 
rigorous,  in  its  quantitative  structure  ;  but  instead  of  the 
prose  and  verse  stresses  regularly  clashing  as  they  do  in 
the  hexameter  or  elegiac,  they  tend  broadly  towards  coin- 
ciding, and  do  entirely  coincide  in  one-third  of  the  lines  of 
the  poem.  We  are  on  the  very  verge  of  the  accentual 
Latin  poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  affinity  is  made 
closer  by  the  free  use  of  initial  and  terminal  assonances, 
and  even  of  occasional  rhyme.  The  use  of  stanzas  with 
a  recurring  refrain  was  not  unexampled  ;  Virgil,  following 
Theocritus  and  Catullus,  had  employed  the  device  with 
singular  beauty  in  the  eighth  Eclogue ;  but  this  is  the  first 
known  instance  of  the  refrain  being  added  to  a  poem  in 
stanzas  of  a  fixed  and  equal  length ;  *  it  is  more  than  half- 
way towards  the  structure  of  an  eleventh-century  Provencal 
alba.  The  keen  additional  pleasure  given  by  rhyme  was 
easily  felt  in  a  language  where  accidental  rhymes  come  so 
often  as  they  do  in  Latin,  but  the  rhyme  here,  so  far  as 
there  is  any,  is  rather  incidental  to  the  way  in  which  the 
language  is  used,  with  its  silvery  chimes  and  recurrences, 
than  sought  out  for  its  own  sake ;  there  is  more  of  actual 
rhyming  in  some  of  the  prose  of  Apuleius.  The  refrain 
itself— 

Cras  ametqui  nunquam  amavit,  quique  amavitcras  amet — 

*  In  the  poem  as  it  has  come  down  to  us  the  refrain  comes  in  at 
irregular  intervals;  but  the  most  plausible  reconstitution  of  a  some- 
what corrupt  and  disordered  text  makes  it  recur  after  every  fourth  line, 
thus  making  up  the  twenty-two  stanzas  mentioned  in  the  title. 


V.]  The  Pcrvigilimn    Vcneris.  245 

has  its  internal  recurrence,  the  folding  back  of  the  musical 
phrase  upon  itself;  and  as  it  comes  over  and  over  again 
it  seems  to  set  the  whole  poem  swaying  to  its  own  music. 
In  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  his  lyrics  (like  this  poem, 
a  song  of  spring),  Tennyson  has  come  very  near,  as  near 
perhaps  as  it  is  possible  to  do  in  words,  towards  explaining 
the  actual  process  through  which  poetry  comes  into  exist- 
ence :  The  fairy  fancies  range,  and  lightly  stirred,  Ring  little 
•bells  of  change  from  word  to  word.  In  the  Pervigilium 
Veneris  with  its  elaborate  simplicity — partly  a  conscious 
literary  artifice,  partly  a  real  reversion  to  the  childhood  of 
poetical  form  —  this  process  is,  as  it  were,  laid  bare  before 
our  eyes ;  the  ringing  phrases  turn  and  return,  and  expand 
and  interlace  and  fo'd  in,  as  though  set  in  motion  by  a 
strain  of  music. 

Cras  amet  qui  nunquam  amavit,  quique  amavit  eras  amet ; 
Ver  novum,  ver  iam  canorutn,  ver  renatus  orbis  est ; 
Vere  concordant  amores,  vere  nubunt  alites 
Et  nemus  comam  resolvit  de  maritis  imbribus  : 

Cras   amet  qui  nunquam  amavit,  quique  amavit  eras 
amet — 

in  these  lines  of  clear  melody  the  poem  opens,  and  the 
rest  is  all  a  series  of  graceful  and  florid  variations  or  em- 
broideries upon  them  ;  the  first  line  perpetually  repeating 
itself  through  the  poem  like  a  thread  of  gold  in  the  pattern 
or  a  phrase  in  the  music.  In  the  soft  April  night  the 
tapering  flame-shaped  rosebud,  soaked  in  warm  dew,  swells 
out  and  breaks  into  a  fire  of  crimson  at  dawn. 

Facta  Cypridis  de  cruore  deque  Amoris  osculo 
Deque  gemmis  deque  flammis  deque  solis  purpuris 
Cras  ruborem  qui  latebat  veste  tectus  ignea 
Unico  marita  nodo  non  pudebit  solvere. 

Flower-garlanded  and  myrtle-shrouded,  the  Spring  wor- 
shippers go  dancing  through  the  fields  that  break  before 


246  Latin  Literature,  [III. 

them  into  a  sheet  of  flowers ;  among  them  the  boy  Love 
goes,  without  his  torch  and  his  arrows ;  amid  gold-flowered 
broom,  under  trees  unloosening  their  tresses,  in  myrtle- 
thicket  and  poplar  shade,  the  whole  land  sings  with  the 
voices  of  innumerable  birds.  Then  with  a  sudden  sob  the 
pageant  ceases :  — 

Ilia  cantat,  nos  tacemus :  quando  ver  venit  meum  ? 
Quando  fiam  uti  chelidon  ut  tacere  desinam  ? 

A  second  spring,  in  effect,  was  not  to  come  for  poetry 
till  a  thousand  years  later;  once  more  then  we  hear  the 
music  of  this  strange  poem,  not  now  in  the  clear  bronze 
utterance  of  a  mature  and  magnificent  language,  but  faintly 
and  haltingly,  in  immature  forms  that  yet  have  notes  of  new 
and  piercing  sweetness. 

Bels  dous  amicx,fassam  unjoc  novel 
Ins  eljardi  on  chanton  li  auzel — 

so  it  rings  out  in  Southern  France,  "  in  an  orchard  under 
the  whitethorn  leaf;"  and  in  England,  later,  but  yet  a 
century  before  Chaucer,  the  same  clear  note  is  echoed, 
bytuene  Mershe  ant  AveHl,  whan  spray  bigineth  to  spring. 

But  in  the  Roman  Empire  under  the  Antonines  the  soil, 
the  race,  the  language,  were  alike  exhausted.  The  anarchy 
of  the  third  century  brought  with  it  the  wreck  of  the  whole 
fabric  of  civilisation ;  and  the  new  religion,  already  widely 
diffused  and  powerful,  was  beginning  to  absorb  into  itself 
on  all  sides  the  elements  of  thought  and  emotion  which 
Bonded  towards  a  new  joy  and  a  living  art. 


VI. 


£ARLY     LATIN     CHRISTIANITY  :     MINUCIUS     FELIX,     TERTULL1AN, 
LACTANTIUS. 

THE  new  religion  was  long  in  adapting  itself  to  literary 
form ;  and  if,  between  the  era  of  the  Antonines  and  that  of 
Diocletian,  a  century  passes  in  which  all  the  important 
literature  is  Christian,  this  is  rather  due  to  the  general 
decay  of  art  and  letters,  than  to  any  high  literary  quality 
in  the  earlier  patristic  writing.  Christianity  began  among 
the  lower  classes,  and  in  the  Greek-speaking  provinces  of 
the  Empire ;  after  it  reached  Rome,  and  was  diffused  through 
the  Western  provinces,  it  remained  for  a  long  time  a  some- 
what obscure  sect,  confined,  in  the  first  instance,  to  the 
small  Jewish  or  Graeco-Asiatic  colonies  which  were  to  be 
found  in  all  centres  of  commerce,  and  spreading  from  them 
among  the  uneducated  urban  populations.  The  persecution 
of  Nero  was  directed  against  obscure  people,  vaguely  known 
as  a  sort  of  Jews,  and  the  martyrdom  of  the  two  great 
apostles  was  an  incident  that  passed  without  remark  and 
almost  without  notice.  Tacitus  dismisses  the  Christians  in 
a  few  careless  words,  and  evidently  classes  the  new  religion 
with  other  base  Oriental  superstitions  as  hardly  worth 
serious  mention.  The  well-known  correspondence  between 
Pliny  and  Trajan,  on  the  subject  of  the  repressive  measures 
to  be  taken  against  the  Christians  of  Bithynia,  indicates 
that  Christianity  had,  by  the  beginning  of  the  second 
century,  taken  a  large  and  firm  footing  in  the  Eastern 

247 


248  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

provinces  ;  but  it  is  not  till  a  good  many  years  later  that  we 
have  any  certain  indication  of  its  obtaining  a  hold  on  the 
educated  classes.  The  legend  of  the  conversion  of  Statius 
seems  to  be  of  purely  mediaeval  origin.  Flavius  Clemens,  the 
cousin  of  the  Emperor  Domitian,  executed  on  the  ground 
of  "  atheism  "  during  the  year  of  his  consulship,  is  claimed, 
though  without  certainty,  as  the  earliest  Christian  martyr  of 
high  rank.  Even  in  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  the 
Church  of  Rome  mainly  consisted  of  people  who  could 
barely  speak  or  write  Latin.  The  Muratorian  fragment, 
the  earliest  Latin  Christian  document,  which  general 
opinion  dates  within  a  few  years  of  the  death  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  and  which  is  part  of  an  extremely  important 
official  list  of  canonical  writings  issued  by  the  authority  of 
the  Roman  Church,  is  barbarous  in  construction  and  diction. 
It  is  in  the  reign  of  Commodus,  amid  the  wreck  of  all  other 
literature,  that  we  come  on  the  first  Christian  authors. 
Victor,  Bishop  of  Rome  from  the  year  186,  is  mentioned  by 
Jerome  as  the  first  author  of  theological  treatises  in  Latin ; 
taken  together  with  his  attempt  to  excommunicate  the 
Asiatic  Churches  on  the  question,  already  a  burning  one, 
of  the  proper  date  of  keeping  Easter,  this  shows  that  the 
Latin  Church  was  now  gaining  independent  force  and 
vitality. 

Two  main  streams  may  be  traced  in  the  Christian  litera- 
ture which  begins  with  the  reign  of  Commodus.  On  the 
one  hand,  there  is  what  may  be  called  the  African  school, 
writing  in  the  new  Latin ;  on  the  other,  the  Italian  school, 
which  attempted  to  mould  classical  Latin  to  Christian  use. 
The  former  bears  a  close  affinity  in  style  to  Apuleius,  or, 
rather,  to  the  movement  of  which  Apuleius  was  the  most 
remarkable  product ;  the  latter  succeeds  to  Quintilian  and 
his  contemporaries  as  the  second  impulse  of  Ciceronianism. 
The  two  opposing  methods  appear  at  their  sharpest  contrast 
in  the  earliest  authors  of  each,  Tertullian  and  Minucius 
Felix.  The  vast  preponderance  of  the  former,  alike  in  volume 


VI.]  Minucins  Felix.  249 

of  production  and  fire  of  eloquence,  offers  a  suggestive 
parallel  to  the  comparative  importance  of  the  two  schools 
in  the  history  of  ecclesiastical  Latin.  Throughout  the 
third  and  fourth  centuries  the  African  school  continues  to 
predominate,  but  it  takes  upon  itself  more  of  the  classical 
finish,  and  tames  the  first  ferocity  of  its  early  manner. 
Cyprian  inclines  more  to  the  style  of  Tertullian ;  Lactantius, 
"the  Christian  Cicero,"  reverts  strongly  towards  the  classical 
forms  :  and  finally,  towards  the  end  of  the  fourth  century, 
the  two  languages  are  combined  by  Augustine,  in  propor- 
tions which,  throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  form  the  accepted 
type  of  the  language  of  Latin  Christianity. 

In  a  fine  passage  at  the  opening  of  the  fifth  book  of  his 
Institutes  of  Divinity,  Lactantius  regrets  the  imperfect 
jiterary  support  given  to  Christianity  by  his  two  eminent 
predecessors.  The  obscurity  and  harshness  of  Tertullian, 
he  says  (and  to  this  may  be  added  his  Montanism,  which 
Actuated  on  the  edge  of  heresy),  prevent  him  from  being 
/ead  or  esteemed  as  widely  as  his  great  literary  power 
deserves  ;  while  Minucius,  in  his  single  treatise,  the  Octavius, 
gave  a  brilliant  specimen  of  his  grace  and  power  as  a 
Christian  apologist,  but  did  not  carry  out  the  task  to  its  full 
scope.  This  last  treatise  is,  indeed,  of  unique  interest,  not 
only  as  a  fine,  if  partial,  vindication  of  the  new  religion, 
but  as  the  single  writing  of  the  age,  Christian  or  pagan, 
which  in  style  and  diction  follows  the  classical  tradition, 
and  almost  reaches  the  classical  standard.  As  to  the  life 
of  its  author,  nothing  is  known  beyond  the  scanty  indica- 
tions given  in  the  treatise  itself.  Even  his  date  is  not 
wholly  certain,  and,  while  the  reign  of  Commodus  is  his 
most  probable  period,  Jerome  appears  to  allude  to  him  as 
later  than  Tertullian,  and  some  modern  critics  incline  to 
place  the  work  in  the  /eign  of  Alexander  Severus. 

The  Octavius  is  a  dialogue  in  the  Ciceronian  manner, 
showing  especially  a  close  study  of  the  De  Natura 
Deorum.  A  brief  and  graceful  introduction  gives  an 


250  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

account  of  the  scene  of  the  dialogue.  The  narrator,  with 
his  two  friends,  Octavius  and  Caecilius,  the  former  a 
Christian,  the  latter  a  somewhat  wavering  adherent  of  the 
old  faith,  are  taking  a  walk  on  the  beach  near  Ostia  on 
a  beautiful  autumn  morning,  watching  the  little  waves 
lapping  on  the  sand,  and  boys  playing  duck-and-drake 
with  pieces  of  tile,  when  Caecilius  kisses  his  hand,  in  the 
ordinary  pagan  usage,  to  an  image  of  Serapis  which  they 
pass.  The  incident  draws  them  on  to  a  theological  dis- 
cussion. Caecilius  sets  forth  the  argument  against  Christi- 
anity in  detail,  and  Octavius  replies  to  him  point  by  point ; 
at  the  end,  Caecilius  professes  himself  overcome,  and 
declares  his  adhesion  to  the  faith  of  his  friend.  Both  in 
the  attack  and  in  the  defence  it  is  only  the  rational  side  of 
the  new  doctrine  which  is  at  issue.  The  unity  of  God,  the 
resurrection  of  the  body,  and  retribution  in  a  future  state, 
make  up  the  sum  of  Christianity  as  it  is  presented.  The 
name  of  Christ  is  not  once  mentioned,  nor  is  his  divinity 
directly  asserted.  There  is  no  allusion  to  the  sacraments, 
or  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Redemption ;  and  Octavius  neither 
quotes  from  nor  refers  to  the  writings  of  either  Old  or  New 
Testament.  Among  early  Christian  writings,  this  method 
of  treatment  is  unexampled  elsewhere.  The  work  is  an 
attempt  to  present  the  new  religion  to  educated  opinion  as 
a  reasonable  philosophic  system ;  as  we  read  it,  we  might 
be  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  With  this 
temperate  rationalism  is  combined  a  clearness  and  purity 
of  diction,  founded  on  the  Ciceronian  style,  but  without 
Cicero's  sumptuousness  of  structure,  that  recalls  the  best 
prose  of  the  Silver  Age. 

The  author  of  the  Octavius  was  a  lawyer,  who  practised 
in  the  Roman  courts.  The  literary  influence  of  Quintilian 
no  doubt  lasted  longer  among  the  legal  profession,  for 
whose  guidance  he  primarily  wrote,  than  among  the  gram- 
marians and  journalists,  who  represent  in  this  age  the 
general  tendency  of  the  world  of  letters.  But  even  in  the 


VI.]  Tertullian.  25 1 

legal  profession  the  new  Latin  had  established  itself,  and, 
except  in  the  capital,  seems  to  have  almost  driven  out  the 
classical  manner.  Its  most  remarkable  exponent  among 
Christian  writers  was,  up  to  the  time  of  his  conversion, 
a  pleader  in  the  Carthaginian  law-courts. 

Quintus  Septimius  Florens  Tertullianus  was  born  at 
Carthage  towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Antoninus  Pius. 
When  he  was  a  young  man,  the  fame  of  Apuleius  as  a 
writer  and  lecturer  was  at  its  height ;  and  though  Tertullian 
himself  never  mentions  him  (as  Apuleius,  on  his  side,  never 
refers  in  specific  terms  to  the  Christian  religion) ,  they  must 
have  been  well  known  to  each  other,  and  their  antagonism 
is  of  the  kind  which  grows  out  of  strong  similarities  of 
nature.  Apuleius  passed  for  a  magician :  Tertullian  was 
a  firm  believer  in  magic,  and  his  conversion  to  Christianity 
was,  he  himself  tells  us,  very  largely  due  to  confessions  of 
ts  truth  extorted  from  demons,  at  the  strange  spiritualistic 
seances  which  were  a  feature  of  the  time  among  all  classes. 
His  conversion  took  place  in  the  last  year  of  Commodus. 
The  tension  between  the  two  religions  —  for  in  Africa,  at  all 
events,  the  old  and  the  new  were  followed  with  equally  fiery 
enthusiasm  —  had  already  reached  breaking  point.  A 
heathen  mob,  headed  by  the  priestesses  of  the  Mater  et 
Virgo  Caelestis,  the  object  of  the  ecstatic  worship  afterwards 
transferred  to  the  mother  of  Christ,  had  two  or  three  years 
before  besieged  the  proconsul  of  Africa  in  his  own  house 
because  he  refused  to  order  a  general  massacre  of  the 
Christians.  In  the  anarchy  after  the  assassination  of  Com- 
modus, the  persecution  broke  out,  and  continued  to  rage 
throughout  the  reign  of  Septimius  Severus.  It  was  in  these 
years  that  Tertullian  poured  forth  the  series  of  apologetic 
and  controversial  writings  whose  fierce  enthusiasm  and  im- 
petuous eloquence  open  the  history  of  Latin  Christianity. 
The  Apologeticum,  the  greatest  of  his  earlier  works,  and, 
upon  the  whole,  his  masterpiece,  was  composed  towards 
the  beginning  of  this  persecution,  in  the  last  years  of  the 


252  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

second  century.  The  terms  in  which  its  purport  is  stated, 
Quod  religio  Christiana  damnanda  non  sit,  nisi  qualis  sit 
prius  intelligatur,  might  lead  one  to  expect  a  grave  and 
reasoned  defence  of  the  new  doctrine,  like  that  of  the 
Octainus.  But  Tertullian's  strength  is  in  attack,  not  in 
defence  ;  and  his  apology  passes  almost  at  once  into  a  fierce 
indictment  of  paganism,  painted  in  all  the  gaudiest  colours 
of  African  rhetoric.  Towards  the  end,  he  turns  violently 
upon  those  who  say  that  Christianity  is  merely  a  system  of 
philosophy :  and  writers  like  Minucius  are  included  with 
the  eclectic  pagan  schoolmen  in  his  condemnation.  Here, 
for  the  first  time,  the  position  is  definitely  taken  which  has 
since  then  had  so  vast  and  varied  an  influence,  that  the 
Holy  Scriptures  are  the  source  of  all  wisdom,  and  that  the 
poetry  and  philosophy  of  the  Graeco-Roman  world  were 
alike  derived  or  perverted  from  the  inspired  writings  of  the 
Old  Testament.  Moses  was  five  hundred  years  before 
Homer;  and  therefore,  runs  his  grandiose  and  sweeping 
fallacy,  Homer  is  derived  from  the  books  of  Moses.  The 
argument,  strange  to  say,  has  lived  almost  into  our  own 
day. 

In  thus  breaking  with  heathen  philosophy  and  poetry, 
Tertullian  necessarily  broke  with  the  literary  traditions  of 
Europe  for  a  thousand  years.  The  Holy  Scriptures,  as  a 
canon  of  revealed  truth,  became  incidentally  but  inevitably 
a  canon  of  literary  style  likewise.  Writings  soaked  in 
quotations  from  the  Hebrew  poets  and  prophets  could  not 
but  be  affected  by  their  style  through  and  through.  A 
current  Latin  translation  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament  — 
the  so-called  Itala,  which  itself  only  survives  as  the  ground- 
work of  later  versions  —  had  already  been  made,  and  was  in 
wide  use.  Its  rude  literal  fidelity  imported  into  Christian 
Latin  an  enormous  mass  of  Grecisms  and  Hebraisms  —  the 
latter  derived  from  the  original  writings,  the  former  from 
the  Septuagint  version  of  the  Old  Testament  —  which 
combined  with  its  free  use  of  popular  language  and  its 


VI.]  Tertullian.  253 

relaxed  grammar  to  force  the  new  Latin  further  and  further 
away  from  the  classical  tradition.  The  new  religion,  though 
it  met  its  educated  opponents  in  argument  and  outshone 
them  in  rhetorical  embellishment,  still  professed,  after  the 
example  of  its  first  founders,  to  appeal  mainly  to  the  simple 
and  the  poor.  "  Stand  forth,  O  soul  !  "  cries  Tertullian  in 
another  treatise  of  the  same  period ;  "  I  appeal  to  thee,  not 
as  wise  with  a  wisdom  formed  in  the  schools,  trained  in 
libraries,  or  nourished  in  Attic  academy  or  portico,  but  as 
simple  and  rude,  without  polish  or  culture ;  such  as  thou 
art  to  those  who  have  thee  only,  such  as  thou  art  in  the 
cross-road,  the  highway,  the  dockyard." 

In  the  ardour  of  its  attacks  upon  the  heathen  civilisation, 
the  rising  Puritanism  of  the  Church  bore  hard  upon  the 
whole  of  culture.  As  against  the  theatre  and  the  gladiatorial 
games,  indeed,  it  occupied  an  unassailable  position.  There 
is  a  grim  and  characteristic  humour  in  Tertullian's  story  of 
the  Christian  woman  who  \vent  to  the  theatre  and  came 
back  from  it  possessed  with  a  devil,  and  the  devil's  crushing 
reply,  In  meo  earn  invent,  to  the  expostulation  of  the 
exorcist ;  a  nobler  passion  rings  in  his  pleading  against  the 
butcheries  of  the  amphitheatre,  "  Do  you  wish  to  see 
blood?  Behold  Christ's!"  His  declamations  against 
worldly  luxury  and  ornament  in  the  sumptuous  pages 
of  the  De  Cultu  Feminarum  are  not  more  sweeping  or 
less  sincere  than  those  of  Horace  or  Juvenal ;  but  the 
violent  attack  made  on  education  and  on  literature  itself  in 
the  De  Idololairia  shows  the  growth  of  that  persecuting 
spirit  which,  as  it  gathered  material  force,  destroyed  ancient 
art  and  literature  wherever  it  found  them,  and  which  led 
Pope  Gregory,  four  hundred  years  later,  to  burn  the 
magnificent  library  founded  by  Augustus.  Nos  sumus  in 
quos  decucurrerunt fines  seculorum,  "  upon  us  the  ends  of  the 
world  are  come,"  is  the  burden  of  Tertullian's  impassioned 
argument.  What  were  art  and  letters  to  those  who  waited, 
from  moment  to  moment,  for  the  glory  of  the  Second 


254  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

Coming  ?  Yet  for  ten  years  or  more  he  continued  to  pour 
forth  his  own  brilliant  essays  ;  and  while  the  substance  of  his 
teaching  becomes  more  and  more  harsh  and  vindictive,  the 
force  of  his  rhetoric,  his  command  over  irony  and  invective, 
the  gorgeous  richness  of  his  vocabulary,  remain  as  striking 
as  ever.  In  the  strange  and  often  romantic  psychology  of 
the  De  Anima,  and  in  the  singular  clothes-philosophy  of  the 
De  Pallia,  he  appears  as  the  precursor  of  Swedenborg  and 
Teufelsdrockh.  A  remarkable  passage  in  the  former  treatise, 
in  which  he  speaks  of  the  growing  pressure  of  over-population 
in  the  Empire,  against  which  wars,  famines,  and  pestilences 
had  become  necessary  if  unwelcome  remedies,  may  lead  us 
to  reconsider  the  theory,  now  largely  accepted,  that  the 
Roman  Empire  decayed  and  perished  for  want  of  men. 
With  the  advance  of  years  his  growing  antagonism  to  the 
Catholic  Church  is  accompanied  by  a  further  hardening  of 
his  style.  The  savage  Puritanism  of  the  De  Monogamia 
and  De  leiunio  is  couched  in  a  scholastic  diction  where  the 
tradition  of  culture  is  disappearing;  and  in  the  gloomy 
ferocity  of  the  De  Pudicitia,  probably  the  latest  of  his 
extant  works,  he  comes  to  a  final  rupture  alike  with 
Catholicism  and  with  humane  letters. 

The  African  school  of  patristic  writers,  of  which  Tertullian 
is  at  once  the  earliest  and  the  most  imposing  figure,  and  of 
which  he  was  indeed  to  a  large  degree  the  direct  founder, 
continued  for  a  century  after  his  death  to  include  the  main 
literary  production  of  Latin  Christianity.  Thascius  Caecilius 
Cyprianus,  Bishop  of  Carthage  from  the  year  248,  though 
a  pupil  and  an  admirer  of  Tertullian,  reverts  in  his  own 
writings  at  once  to  orthodoxy  and  to  an  easy  and  copious 
diction.  In  earlier  youth  he  had  been  a  professor  of 
rhetoric ;  after  his  conversion  in  mature  life,  he  gave  up  all 
his  wealth  to  the  poor,  and  devoted  his  great  literary  gifts  to 
apologetic  and  hortatory  writings.  He  escaped  the  Decian 
persecution  by  retiring  from  Carthage ;  but  a  few  years 
later  he  was  executed  in  the  renewed  outbreak  of  judicial 


VI.]  Cyprian  and  Lactantius.  255 

massacres  which  sullied  the  short  and  disastrous  reign  of 
Valerian.  Forty  years  after  Cyprian's  death  the  rhetorician 
Arnobius  of  Sicca  in  Numidia  renewed  the  attack  on  pagan- 
ism, rather  than  the  defence  or  exposition  of  Christianity, 
in  the  seven  books  Adversus  Nationes,  which  he  is  said  to 
have  written  as  a  proof  of  the  sincerity  of  his  conversion. 
"Uneven  and  ill-proportioned,"  in  the  phrase  of  Jerome, 
this  work  follows  neither  the  elaborate  rhetoric  of  the  early 
African  school,  nor  the  chaster  and  more  polished  style  of 
Cyprian,  but  rather  renews  the  inferior  and  slovenly  manner 
of  the  earlier  antiquarians  and  encyclopedists.  A  free  use 
of  the  rhetorical  figures  goes  side  by  side  with  a  general 
want  of  finish  and  occasional  lapses  into  solecism.  His 
literary  gift  is  so  small,  and  his  knowledge  of  the  religion 
he  professes  to  defend  so  slight  and  so  excessively  inaccurate, 
that  theologians  and  men  of  letters  for  once  agree  that  his 
main  value  consists  in  the  fragments  of  antiquarian  informa- 
tion which  he  preserves.  But  he  has  a  further  claim  to 
notice  as  the  master  of  a  celebrated  pupil. 

Lucius  Caecilius  Firmianus  Lactantius,  a  name  eminent 
among  patristic  authors,  and  not  inconsiderable  in  humane 
letters,  had,  like  Cyprian,  been  a  professor  of  rhetoric,  and 
embraced  Christianity  in  mature  life.  That  he  was  a  pupil 
of  Arnobius  is  established  by  the  testimony  of  Jerome ;  his 
African  birth  is  only  a  doubtful  inference  from  this  fact. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  third  century  he  established  a 
school  at  Nicomedia,  which  had  practically  become  the 
seat  of  empire  under  the  rule  of  Diocletian;  and  from 
there  he  was  summoned  to  the  court  of  Gaul  to  superintend 
the  education  of  Crispus,  the  ill-fated  son  of  Constantine. 
The  new  religion  had  passed  through  its  last  and  sharpest 
persecution  under  Diocletian ;  now,  of  the  two  joint- 
emperors  Constantine  openly  favoured  the  Christians,  and 
Licinius  had  been  forced  to  relax  the  hostility  towards 
them  which  he  had  at  first  shown.  As  it  permeated  the 
court  and  saw  the  reins  of  government  almost  within  its 


256  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

grasp,  the  Church  naturally  dropped  some  of  the  anathema- 
tising spirit  in  which  it  had  regarded  art  and  literature  in 
the  days  of  its  earlier  struggles.  Lactantius  brought  to  its 
service  a  taste  trained  in  the  best  literary  tradition;  and 
while  some  doubt  was  cast  on  his  dogmatic  orthodoxy  as 
regards  the  precise  definition  of  the  Persons  of  the  Trinity, 
his  pure  and  elegant  diction  was  accepted  as  a  model  for 
later  writers.  His  greatest  work,  the  seven  books  of  the 
Institutes  of  Divinity,  was  published  a  few  years  before 
the  victory  of  Constantine  over  Maxentius  outside  the 
walls  of  Rome,  which  was  the  turning-point  in  the  contest 
between  the  two  religions.  It  is  an  able  exposition  of 
Christian  doctrine  in  a  style  which,  for  eloquence,  copi- 
ousness, and  refinement,  is  in  the  most  striking  contrast 
to  the  wretched  prose  produced  by  contemporary  pagan 
writers.  The  influence  of  Cicero  is  obvious  and  avowed 
throughout ;  but  the  references  in  the  work  show  the 
author  to  have  been  familiar  with  the  whole  range  of  the 
Latin  classics,  poets  as  well  as  prose  writers.  Ennius, 
the  comedians  and  satirists,  Virgil  and  Horace,  are  cited  by 
him  freely;  he  even  dares  to  praise  Ovid.  In  his  treatise 
On  God's  Workmanship  —  De  Opificio  Dei — the  arguments 
are  often  borrowed  with  the  language  from  Cicero,  but 
Lucretius  is  also  quoted  and  combated.  The  more 
fanatical  side  of  the  new  religion  appears  in  the  curious 
work,  De  Mortibus  Persecutorum,  written  after  Constantine 
had  definitely  thrown  in  his  lot  with  Christianity.  It  is 
famous  as  containing  the  earliest  record  of  the  vision  of 
Constantine  before  the  battle  of  the  Mulvian  Bridge ;  and 
its  highly  coloured  account  of  the  tragical  fates  of  the 
persecuting  Emperors,  from  Nero  to  Diocletian,  had  a  large 
effect  in  fixing  the  tradition  of  the  later  Empire  as  viewed 
throughout  the  Middle  Ages.  The  long  passionate  pro- 
test of  the  Church  against  heathen  tyranny  breaks  out 
here  into  equally  passionate  exultation  ;  the  Roman  Empire 
is  already  seen,  as  it  was  later  by  St.  Augustine,  fading  and 


VI.]  Commodianus.  257 

crumbling  away  with  the  growth  of  the  new  and  imperial 
City  of  God. 

Besides  the  large  and  continuous  volume  of  its  prose 
production,  the  Latin  Church  of  the  third  century  also 
made  its  first  essays  in  poetry.  They  are  both  rude  and 
scanty ;  it  was  not  till  late  in  the  fourth  century  that 
Christian  poetry  reached  its  full  development  in  the  hymns 
of  Ambrose  and  Prudentius,  and  the  hexameter  poems  of 
Paulinus  of  Nola.  The  province  of  Africa,  fertile  as  it  was 
in  prose  writers,  never  produced  a  poet  of  any  eminence. 
The  pieces  in  verse  —  they  can  hardly  be  called  poems  — 
ascribed  to  Tertullian  and  Cyprian  are  forgeries  of  a  late 
period.  But  contemporary  with  them  is  an  African  verse 
writer  of-  curious  linguistic  interest,  Commodianus.  A 
bishop  of  Marseilles,  who  wrote,  late  in  the  fifth  century, 
a  continuation  of  St.  Jerome's  catalogue  of  ecclesiastical 
writers,  mentions  his  work  in  a  very  singular  phrase : 
"  After  his  conversion,"  he  says,  "  Commodianus  wrote 
a  treatise  against  the  pagans  in  an  intermediate  language 
approximating  to  verse,"  mediocri  se rmone  quasi  versu.  This 
treatise,  the  Carmen  Apologeticum  adversus  ludaeos  et  Gentcs, 
is  extant,  together  with  other  pieces  by  the  same  author. 
It  is  a  poem  of  over  a  thousand  lines,  which  the  allusions 
to  the  Gothic  war  and  the  Decian  persecution  fix  as 
having  been  written  in  or  very  near  the  year  250.  It  is 
written  in  hexameters,  composed  on  a  system  which  wavers 
between  the  quantitative  and  accentual  treatment.  These 
are  almost  evenly  balanced.  The  poem  is  thus  a  document 
of  great  importance  in  the  history  of  the  development  of 
mediaeval  out  of  classical  poetry.  Though  not,  of  course, 
without  his  barbarisms,  Commodianus  was  obviously  neither 
ignorant  nor  careless  of  the  rules  of  classical  versification, 
some  of  which  —  for  instance,  the  strong  caesura  in  the 
middle  of  the  third  foot  —  he  retains  with  great  strictness. 
His  peculiar  prosody  is  plainly  deliberate.  Only  a  very 
few  lines  are  wholly  quantitative,  and  none  are  wholly 


258  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

accentual,  except  where  accent  and  quantity  happen  to 
coincide.  Much  of  the  pronunciation  of  modern  Italian 
may  be  traced  in  his  remarkable  accentuation  of  some 
words ;  like  Italian,  he  both  throws  back  the  accent  off  a 
long  syllable  and  slides  it  forward  upon  a  short  one. 
Assonance  is  used  freely,  but  there  is  not  more  rhyming 
than  is  usual  in  the  poetry  of  the  late  empire.  Not  only  in 
pronunciation,  but  in  grammatical  inflexion,  the  beginnings 
of  Italian  here  and  there  appear.  The  case-forms  of  the 
different  declensions  are  beginning  to  run  into  one  another  : 
the  plural,  for  example,  of  insignis  is  no  longer  insignes,  but, 
as  in  Italian,  insigni ;  and  the  case-inflexions  themselves 
are  dwindling  away  before  the  free  use  of  prepositions, 
which  was  already  beginning  to  show  itself  in  the  Pervigilium 
Veneris. 

Popular  poetry  was  now  definitely  asserting  itself  along- 
side of  book-poetry  formed  on  the  classical  model.  But 
authors  who  kept  up  a  high  literary  standard  in  prose 
continued  to  do  so  in  verse  also.  The  elegiac  piece 
De  Ave  Phoenice,  found  in  early  mediaeval  collections  under 
the  name  of  Lactantius,  and  accepted  as  his  by  recent 
critics,  is  written  in  accurate  and  graceful  elegiac  couplets, 
which  are  quite  in  accordance  with  the  admiration  Lac- 
tantius, in  his  work  On  the  Wrath  of  God,  expresses  for 
Ovid.  It  is  perhaps  the  earliest  instance  outside  the  field 
of  prose  of  the  truce  or  coalition  which  was  slowly  form- 
ing itself  between  the  new  religion  and  the  old  culture. 
Beyond  a  certain  faint  and  almost  impalpable  mysticism, 
which  hints  at  the  legend  of  the  Phoenix  as  symbolical 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
poem  which  is  distinctively  Christian.  Phoebus  and  the 
lyre  of  Cyllene  are  invoked,  as  they  might  be  by  a  pagan 
poet.  But  the  language  is  from  beginning  to  end  full  of 
Christian  or,  at  least,  scriptural  reminiscences,  which  could 
only  be  possible  to  a  writer  familiar  with  the  Psalter. 
The  description  with  which  the  poems  opens  of  the  Earthly 


VI.]  The  Empire  and  the  Church.  259 

Paradise,  a  "  land  east  of  the  sun,"  where  the  bird  has 
its  home,  has  mingled  touches  of  the  Elysium  of  Homer 
and  Virgil,  and  the  New  Jerusalem  of  the  Revelation  \  as 
in  the  Psalms,  the  sun  is  a  bridegroom  coming  out  of 
his  chamber,  and  night  and  day  are  full  of  a  language  that 
is  not  speech. 

In  the  literary  revival  of  the  latter  half  of  the  fourth 
century  these  tendencies  have  developed  themselves,  and 
taken  a  more  mature  but  a  less  interesting  form.  After 
Christianity  had  become  formally  and  irrevocably  the  State 
religion,  it  took  over  what  was  left  of  Latin  culture  as 
part  of  the  chaotic  inheritance  which  it  had  to  accept 
as  the  price  for  civil  establishment.  A  heavy  price  was 
paid  on  both  sides  when  Constantine,  in  Dante's  luminous 
phrase,  "turned  the  eagles."  The  Empire  definitively 
parted  with  the  splendid  administrative  and  political  tra- 
dition founded  on  the  classical  training  and  the  Stoic 
philosophy ;  though  shattered  as  it  had  been  in  the  anarchy 
of  the  third  century,  that  was  perhaps  in  any  case  irrecover- 
able. The  Church,  on  its  side,  drew  away  in  the  persons 
of  its  leaders  from  its  earlier  tradition,  with  all  that  it 
involved  in  the  growth  of  a  wholly  new  thought  and  art, 
and  armed  or  hampered  itself  with  that  classicalism  from 
which  it  never  again  got  quite  free.  It  is  in  the  century 
before  Constantine,  therefore,  when  old  and  new  were  in 
the  sharpest  antagonism,  and  yet  were  both  full  of  a 
strange  ferment  —  the  ferment  of  dissolution  in  the  one 
case,  in  the  other  that  of  quickening  —  that  the  end  of 
the  ancient  world,  and  with  it  the  end  of  Latin  literature 
as  such,  might  reasonably  be  placed.  But  the  first  result 
of  the  alliance  between  the  Empire  and  the  Church  was 
to  give  added  dignity  to  the  latter  and  renewed  energy 
to  the  former.  The  partial  revival  of  letters  in  the  fourth 
century  may  induce  us  to  extend  the  period  of  the  ancient 
Latin  literature  so  far  as  to  include  Ausonius  and  Claudian  as 
legitimate,  though  remote,  successors  of  the  Augustan  poets. 


VII. 

THE  FOURTH   CENTURY  :    AUSONIUS  AND   CLAUDIAN. 

FOR  a  full  century  after  the  death  of  Marcus  Aurelius, 
Latin  literature  was,  apart  from  the  Christian  writers, 
practically  extinct.  The  authors  of  the  least  importance, 
or  whose  names  even  are  known  to  any  but  professional 
scholars,  may  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand.  The 
stream  of  Roman  law,  the  one  guiding  thread  down  those 
dark  ages,  continued  on  its  steady  course.  Papinian  and 
Ulpian,  the  two  foremost  jurists  of  the  reigns  of  Septimius 
and  Alexander  Severus,  bear  a  reputation  as  high  as  that 
of  any  of  their  illustrious  predecessors.  Both  rose  to  what 
was  in  this  century  the  highest  administrative  position  in 
the  Empire,  the  prefecture  of  the  praetorian  guards. 
Papinian,  a  native  it  seems  of  the  Syrian  town  of  Emesa, 
and  a  kinsman  of  the  Syrian  wife  of  Septimius  Severus,  was 
the  author  of  numerous  legal  works,  both  in  Greek  and 
Latin.  Under  Severus  he  was  not  only  commander  of  the 
household  troops,  but  discharged  what  we  should  now  call 
the  duties  of  Home  Secretary.  His  genius  for  law  was 
united  with  an  independence  of  judgment  and  a  sense  of 
equity  which  rose  beyond  the  limits  of  formal  jurisprudence, 
and  made  him  one  of  the  great  humanising  influences  of 
his  profession.  He  was  murdered,  with  circumstances  of 
great  brutality,  by  the  infamous  Caracalla,  almost  immediately 
after  his  accession  to  sole  power.  Domitius  Ulpianus, 
Papinian's  successor  as  the  head  of  Latin  jurists,  was  also 

260 


VII.]       Papinian  and  Ulpian:  Sammonicus.         26 1 

a  Syrian  by  birth.  Already  an  assessor  to  Papinian,  and  a 
member  of  the  imperial  privy  council,  he  was  raised  to  the 
praetorian  prefecture  and  afterwards  removed  from  it  by 
his  countryman,  the  Emperor  Heliogabalus,  but  reinstated 
by  Alexander  Severus,  under  whom  he  was  second  ruler 
of  the  Empire  till  killed  in  a  revolt  of  the  praetorian  guards 
In  the  year  228.  He  was  succeeded  in  the  prefecture  by 
Julius  Paulus,  a  jurist  of  almost  equal  eminence,  though 
inferior  to  Ulpian  in  style  and  literary  grace.  Roman  law 
practically  remained  at  the  point  where  these  three 
eminent  men  left  it,  or  only  followed  in  their  footsteps, 
until  its  final  systematisation  under  Justinian. 

Beyond  the  field  of  law,  such  prose  as  was  written  in 
this  century  was  mainly  Greek.  The  historical  works  of 
Herodian  and  Dio  Cassius,  poor  in  quality  as  they  are, 
seem  to  have  excelled  anything  written  at  the  same  time  in 
Latin.  Their  contemporary,  Marius  Maximus,  continued 
the  series  of  biographies  of  the  Emperors  begun  by  Suetonius, 
carrying  it  down  from  Nerva  to  Heliogabalus ;  but  the  work, 
such  as  it  was,  is  lost,  and  is  only  known  as  the  main  source 
used  by  the  earlier  compilers  of  the  Augustan  History. 
Verse-making  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  inferior  gram- 
marians. Of  their  numerous  productions  enough  survives 
to  indicate  that  a  certain  technical  skill  was  not  wholly  lost. 
The  metrical  treatises  of  Terentianus  Maurus,  a  scholar  of 
the  later  years  of  the  second  century,  show  that  the  science 
of  metre  was  studied  with  great  care,  not  only  in  its  common 
forms,  but  in  the  less  familiar  lyric  measures.  The  didactic 
poem  on  the  art  of  medicine  by  Quintus  Sammonicus 
Serenus,  the  son  of  an  eminent  bibliophile,  and  the  friend 
of  the  Emperor  Alexander  Severus,  though  of  little  poetical 
merit,  is  written  in  graceful  and  fluent  verse.  If  of  little 
merit  as  poetry,  it  is  of  even  less  as  science.  Medicine 
had  sunk  lower  towards  barbarism  than  versification,  when 
a  sovereign  remedy  against  fevers  was  described  in  these 
polished  lines :  — 


262  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

Inscribis  chartae  quod  dicitur  Abracadabra, 
Saepius  et  subter  repetis,  sed  detrahe  summam 
Et  magis  atque  magis  desint  elementa  figurist 
Singula  quae  semper  rapies  et  cetera  figes 
Donee  in  angustum  redigatur  litera  conum  : 
His  lino  nexis  collum  redimire  memento. 

Nor  is  his  alternative  remedy  of  a  piece  of  coral  hung  round 
the  patient's  neck  much  more  rational.  The  drop  from  the 
science  of  Celsus  is  much  more  striking  here  than  the  drop 
from  the  art  of  Celsus'  contemporary  Manilius.  An  inter- 
mittent imperial  patronage  of  letters  lingered  on.  The 
elder  and  younger  Gordian  (the  latter  a  pupil  of  Sammonicus' 
father,  who  bequeathed  his  immense  library  to  him)  had 
some  reputation  as  writers.  Clodius  Albinus,  the  governor 
of  Britain  who  disputed  the  empire  with  Septimius  Severus, 
was  a  devoted  admirer  of  Apuleius,  and  wrote  romances  in 
a  similar  manner,  which,  according  to  his  biographer,  had 
no  inconsiderable  circulation. 

Under  Diocletian  and  his  successors  there  was  a  slight 
and  partial  revival  of  letters,  which  chiefly  showed  itself  on 
the  side  of  verse.  The  Cynegetica,  a  didactic  poem  on 
hunting,  by  the  Carthaginian  poet  Marcus  Aurelius  Olympius 
Nemesianus,  is,  together  with  four  bucolic  pieces  by  the 
same  author,  the  chief  surviving  fragment  of  the  main  line 
of  Virgilian  tradition.  The  Cynegetica,  in  spite  of  its  good 
taste  and  its  excellent  versification,  is  on  the  whole  a  dull 
performance ;  but  in  the  other  pieces,  the  pastoral  form 
gives  the  author  now  and  then  an  opportunity  of  introducing 
a  little  touch  of  the  romantic  tone  which  is  partly  imitated 
from  Virgil,  but  partly  natural  to  the  new  Latin. 

Perdit  spina  rosas  nee  semper  lilia  candent 

Nee  longum  tenet  uva  comas  nee  popidus  umbras ; 

Donum  forma  breve  est,  nee  se  quod  commodtt  annis :  — 

in  these   graceful   lines   the    copied  Virgilian    cadence   is 


VII.]          Tiberianus :  the  Augustan  History.  263 

united  with  the  directness  and  the  real  or  assumed  simplicity 
which  belongs  to  the  second  childhood  of  Latin  literature, 
and  which  is  so  remarkable  in  the  authors  who  founded  the 
new  style.  The  new  style  itself  was  also  largely  practised, 
but  only  a  few  scattered  remnants  survive.  Tiberianus, 
Count  of  Africa,  Vicar  of  Spain,  and  praetorian  prefect  of 
Gaul  (the  whole  nomenclature  of  the  Empire  is  now  passing 
from  the  Roman  to  the  mediaeval  type)  under  Constantino 
the  Great,  is  usually  identified  with  the  author  of  some  of 
the  most  strikingly  beautiful  of  these  fragmentary  pieces. 
A  descriptive  passage,  consisting  of  twenty  lines  of  finely 
written  trochaics,  reminds  one  of  the  Pervigilium  Veneris  in 
the  richness  of  its  language  and  the  delicate  simplicity  of 
its  style.  The  last  lines  may  be  quoted  for  their  singular 
likeness  to  one  of  the  most  elaborately  beautiful  stanzas 
of  the  Faerie  Queene,  that  which  describes  the  sounds 
"  consorted  in  one  harmony "  which  Guyon  hears  in  the 
gardens  of  Acrasia  :  — 

Has  per  umbras  omnis  ales  plus  canora  quant  putes 
Cantibus  vernis  strepebat  et  susurris  dulcibus  : 
Hie  loquentis  murmur  amnis  concinebat  frondibus 
Quas  melos  vocalis  aurae,  musa  Zephyri,  moverat: 
Sic  euntem  per  virecta  pulcra  odora  et  musica 
Ales  amnis  aura  lucus  flos  et  umbra  iuverat. 

The  principal  prose  work,  however,  which  has  come  down 
from  this  age,  shows  a  continued  and  even  increased  degra- 
dation of  style.  The  so-called  Historia  Augusta,  a  series 
of  memoirs,  in  continuation  of  Suetonius'  Lives  of  the  Twelve 
Caesars,  of  the  Roman  Emperors  from  Hadrian  to  Numerian 
(A.D.  117-284),  was  begun  under  Diocletian  and  finished 
under  Constantine  by  six  writers  —  Aelius  Spartianus,  Julius 
Capitolinus,  Vulcacius  Gallicanus,  Trebellius  Pollio,  Aelius 
Lamprklius,  and  Flavius  Vopiscus.  Most  of  them,  if  not 
all,  were  officials  of  the  imperial  court,  and  had  free  access 
to  the  registers  of  the  senate  as  well  as  to  more  private 


264  Latin  Literature.  [Ill, 

sources  of  information.  The  extreme  feebleness  of  the  con- 
tents of  this  curious  work  is  only  exceeded  by  the  poverty 
and  childishness  of  the  writing.  History  had  sunk  into  a 
collection  of  trivial  gossip  and  details  of  court  life,  couched 
in  a  language  worthy  of  a  second-rate  chronicler  of  the  Dark 
Ages.  The  mere  outward  circumstances  of  the  men  whose 
lives  they  narrated  —  the  purpurati  Augusti,  as  one  of  the 
authors  calls  them  in  a  romantically  sonorous  phrase  —  were 
indeed  of  world-wide  importance,  and  among  the  masses 
of  rubbish  of  which  the  memoirs  chiefly  consist  there  is 
included  much  curious  information  and  striking  incident. 
But  their  main  interest  is  in  the  light  they  throw  on  the 
gradual  sinking  of  the  splendid  administrative  organisation 
of  the  second  century  towards  the  sterile  Chinese  hierarchy 
of  the  Byzantine  Empire,  and  the  concurrent  degradation  of 
paganism,  both  as  a  political  and  a  religious  system. 

Vopiscus,  the  last  of  the  six  authors,  apologises,  in  draw- 
ing the  work  to  a  close,  for  his  slender  literary  power,  and 
expresses  the  hope  that  his  material  at  least  may  be  found 
useful  to  some  "  eloquent  man  who  may  wish  to  unlock 
the  actions  of  princes."  What  he  had  in  his  mind  was 
probably  not  so  much  regular  history  as  the  panegyrical 
oratory  which  about  this  same  time  became  a  prominent 
feature  of  the  imperial  courts,  and  gave  their  name  to  a 
whole  school  of  writers  known  as  the  Panegyrici.  Gaul, 
for  a  long  time  the  rival  of  Africa  as  the  nurse  of  judicial 
oratory,  was  the  part  of  the  Empire  where  this  new  form 
of  literature  was  most  assiduously  cultivated.  Up  to  the 
age  of  Constantine,  it  had  enjoyed  practical  immunity  from 
barbarian  invasion,  and  had  only  had  a  moderate  share  of 
the  civil  wars  which  throughout  the  third  century  desolated 
all  parts  of  the  Empire.  In  wealth  and  civilisation,  and  in 
the  arts  of  peace,  it  probably  held  the  foremost  place  among 
the  provinces.  Marseilles,  Narbonne,  Toulouse,  Bordeaux, 
Autun,  Rheims,  and  Treves  all  possessed  famous  and 
flourishing  schools  of  oratory.  The  last-named  town  was 


fll.]  Ausonius.  265 

after  the  supreme  power  had  been  divided  among  two  or 
more  Augusti,  a  frequent  seat  of  the  imperial  government 
of  the  Western  provinces,  and,  like  Milan,  became  a  more 
important  centre  of  public  life  than  Rome.  Of  the  extant 
collection  of  panegyrics,  two  were  delivered  there  before 
Diocletian's  colleague,  the  Emperor  Maximianus.  A  florid 
Ciceronianism  was  the  style  most  in  vogue,  and  the  phrase- 
ology, at  least,  of  the  old  State  religion  was,  until  the 
formal  adoption  of  Christianity  by  the  government,  not 
only  retained,  but  put  prominently  forward.  Eumenius  of 
Autun,  the  author  of  five  or  more  pieces  in  the  collection, 
delivered  at  dates  between  the  years  297  and  311,  is  the 
most  distinguished  figure  of  the  group.  His  fluent  and 
ornate  Latin  may  be  read  with  some  pleasure,  though  the 
purpose  of  the  orations  leaves  them  little  value  as  a  record 
of  facts  or  a  candid  expression  of  opinions.  Under  the 
influence  of  these  nurseries  of  rhetoric  a  new  Gallic  school 
of  Christian  writers  rose  and  flourished  during  the  fourth 
century.  Hilarius  of  Poitiers,  the  most  eminent  of  the 
Gallic  bishops  of  this  period,  wrote  controversial  and 
expository  works  in  the  florid  involved  style  of  the  neo- 
Ciceronian  orators,  which  had  in  their  day  a  high  reputation. 
As  the  first  known  author  of  Latin  hymns,  he  is  the  pre- 
cursor of  Ambrose  and  Prudentius.  Ambrose  himself, 
though  as  Bishop  of  Milan  he  belongs  properly  to  the 
Italian  school  of  theological  writers,  was  born  and  probably 
educated  at  Treves.  But  the  literature  of  the  province 
reached  its  highest  point  somewhat  later,  in  one  of  the  most 
important  authors  of  the  century,  Decimus  Magnus  Ausonius 
of  Bordeaux. 

Ausonius  was  of  Gallic  blood  by  both  parents ;  he  was 
educated  in  grammar  and  rhetoric  at  the  university  of 
Bordeaux,  and  was  afterwards  for  many  years  professor  of 
both  subjects  at  that  of  Treves.  As  tutor  to  Gratian,  son 
and  successor  of  the  Emperor  Valentinian,  he  established 
himself  ir  court  favour,  and  fulfilled  many  high  State  offices 


266  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

After  Gratian  was  succeeded  by  Theodosius  he  retired  to 
a  lettered  ease  near  his  native  town,  where  he  lived  till 
nearly  the  end  of  the  century.  His  numerous  poetical 
works  are  of  the  most  miscellaneous  kind,  ranging  from 
Christian  hymns  and  elegies  on  deceased  relations  to  trans- 
lations from  the  Greek  Anthology  and  centos  from  Virgil. 
Among  them  the  volume  of  Idyllia  constitutes  his  chief 
claim  to  eminence,  and  gives  him  a  high  rank  among  the 
later  Latin  poets.  The  gem  of  this  collection  is  the  famous 
Mosellat  written  at  Treves  about  the  year  370.  The  most 
beautiful  of  purely  descriptive  Latin  poems,  it  is  unique  in 
the  felicity  with  which  it  unites  Virgilian  rhythm  and  diction 
with  the  new  romantic  sense  of  the  beauties  of  nature. 
The  feeling  for  the  charm  of  landscape  which  we  had 
occasion  to  note  in  the  letters  of  the  younger  Pliny  is  here 
fully  developed,  with  a  keener  eye  and  an  enlarged  power  of 
expression.  Pliny's  description  of  the  Clitumnus  may  be 
interestingly  compared  with  the  passage  of  this  poem  in 
which  Ausonius  recounts,  with  fine  and  observant  touches, 
the  beauties  of  his  northern  river  —  the  liquid  lapse  of 
waters,  the  green  wavering  reflections,  the  belt  of  crisp 
sand  by  the  water's  edge  and  the  long  weeds  swaying  with 
the  stream,  the  gleaming  gravel-beds  under  the  water  with 
their  patches  of  moss  and  the  quick  fishes  darting  hither 
and  thither  over  them ;  or  the  oftener-quoted  and  not  less 
beautiful  lines  where  he  breaks  into  rapture  over  the  sunset 
colouring  of  stream  and  bank,  and  the  glassy  water  where, 
at  evening,  all  the  hills  waver  and  the  vine-tendril  shakes 
and  the  grape-bunches  swell  in  the  crystal  mirror.  In  virtue 
of  this  poem  Ausonius  ranks  not  merely  as  the  last,  or  all 
but  the  last,  of  Latin,  but  as  the  first  of  French  poets.  His 
feeling  for  the  country  of  his  birth  has  all  the  romantic 
patriotism  which  we  are  accustomed  to  associate  with  a 
much  earlier  or  a  much  later  age.  The  language  of  Du 
Bella  y  in  the  sixteenth  century  — 


VII.]  Ausonius.  267 

Plus  que  le  marbre  dur  me  plaist  rardoise  fine. 
Plus  man  Loire  Gaulois  que  le  Tybre  Latin  — 

is  anticipated  here.  The  softer  northern  loveliness,  la 
douceur  Angevine,  appeals  to  Ausonius  more  than  all  the 
traditional  beauties  of  Arcadia  or  Sicily.  It  is  with  the 
Gallic  rivers  that  he  compares  his  loved  Moselle :  Non  tibi 
se  Liger  anteferet,  non  Axona  praeceps  .  .  .  te  sparsis  incerta 
Druentia  ripis. 

O  lordly  flow  the  Loire  and  Seine 
And  loud  the  dark  Durance  !  — 

we  seem  to  hear  the  very  words  of  the  modern  ballad  :  and 
at  the  end  of  the  poem  his  imagination  returns,  with  the 
fondness  of  a  lover,  to  the  green  lakes  and  sounding  streams 
of  Aquitaine,  and  the  broad  sea-like  reaches  of  his  native 
Garonne. 

In  this  poem,  alike  by  the  classic  beauty  of  his  language 
and  the  modernism  of  his  feeling,  Ausonius  marks  one  of 
the  great  divisions  in  the  history  of  poetry.  He  is  the  last 
of  the  poets  of  the  Empire  which  v/as  still  nominally  co- 
extensive with  the  world,  which  held  in  itself  East  and  West, 
the  old  and  the  new.  The  final  division  of  the  Roman 
world,  which  took  place  in  the  year  395  between  the  two 
sons  of  Theodosius,  synchronises  with  a  division  as  definite 
and  as  final  between  classical  and  mediaeval  poetry ;  and 
in  the  last  years  of  the  fourth  century  the  parting  of  the 
two  streams,  the  separation  of  the  dying  from  the  dawning 
light,  is  placed  in  sharp  relief  by  the  works  of  two  con- 
temporary poets,  Claudian  and  Prudentius.  The  singular 
and  isolated  figure  of  Claudian,  the  posthumous  child  of  the 
classical  world,  stands  alongside  of  that  of  the  first  great 
Christian  poet  like  the  figures  which  were  fabled  to  stand, 
regarding  the  rising  and  setting  sun,  by  the  Atlantic  gates 
where  the  Mediterranean  opened  into  the  unknown  Western 
seas. 

Claudius  Claudianus  was  of  Asiatic  origin,  and  lived  at 


268  Latin  Literature.  [HI. 

Alexandria  until,  in  the  year  of  the  death  of  Theodosius,  he 
passed  into  Italy  and  became  the  laureate  of  the  court  of 
Milan.  Till  then  he  had,  according  to  his  own  statement,, 
written  in  Greek,  his  life  having  been  passed  wholly  in  the 
Greek-speaking  provinces.  But  immediately  on  his  arrival 
at  the  seat  of  the  Western  or  Latin  Empire  he  showed  him- 
self a  master  of  the  language  and  forms  of  Latin  poetry 
such  as  had  not  been  known  since  the  end  of  the  first 
century.  His  poems,  so  far  as  they  can  be  dated,  belong 
entirely  to  the  next  ten  years.  He  is  conjectured  not  to 
have  long  survived  the  downfall  of  his  patron  Stilicho, 
the  great  Vandal  general  who,  as  guardian  of  the  young 
Emperor  Honorius,  was  practically  ruler  of  the  Western 
Empire.  He  was  the  last  eminent  man  of  letters  who  was 
a  professed  pagan. 

The  historical  epics  which  Claudian  produced  in  rapid 
succession  during  the  last  five  years  of  the  fourth  and  the 
first  five  of  the  fifth  century  are  now  little  read,  except 
by  historians  who  refer  to  them  for  details  of  the  wars 
or  court  intrigues  of  the  period.  A  hundred  years  ago, 
when  Statius  and  Silius  Italicus  formed  part  of  the  regular 
course  of  classical  study,  he  naturally  and  properly  stood 
alongside  of  them.  His  Latin  L  as  pure  as  that  of  the 
best  poets  of  the  Silver  Age ;  in  wealth  of  language  and 
in  fertility  of  imagination  he  is  excelled,  if  at  all,  by  Statius 
alone.  Alone  in  his  age  he  inherits  the  scholarly  tradition 
which  still  lingered  among  the  libraries  of  Alexandria. 
Nonnus,  the  last  and  not  one  of  the  least  learned  and 
graceful  of  the  later  Greek  epicists,  who  probably  lived  not 
long  after  Claudian,  was  also  of  Egyptian  birth  and  training, 
and  he  and  Claudian  are  really  the  last  representatives  of 
that  Alexandrian  school  which  had  from  the  first  had  so 
large  and  deep  an  influence  over  the  literature  of  Rome. 
The  immense  range  of  time  covered  by  Greek  literature  is 
brought  more  vividly  to  our  imagination  when  we  consider 
that  this  single  Alexandrian  school,  which  began  late  in 


VII.]  Claudian.  269 

the  history  of  Greek  writing  and  came  to  an  end  centuries 
before  its  extinction,  thus  completely  overlaps  at  both  ends 
the  whole  life  of  the  literature  of  Rome,  reaching  as  it 
does  from  before  Ennius  till  after  Claudian. 

These  historical  epics  of  Claudian's  —  On  the  Consulate  of 
Stilicho,  On  the  Gildonic  War,  On  the  Pollentine  War,  On 
the  Third,  Fourth,  and  Sixth  Consulates  of  Honorius  —  are 
accompanied  by  other  pieces,  written  in  the  same  stately 
and  harmonious  hexameter,  of  a  more  personal  interest : 
invectives  against  Rufinus  and  Eutropius,  the  rivals  of  his 
patron ;  a  panegyric  on  Stilicho's  wife,  Serena,  the  niece 
of  Theodosius ;  a  fine  epithalamium  on  the  marriage  of 
Honorius  with  Maria,  the  daughter  of  Stilicho  and  Serena ; 
and  also  by  a  number  of  poems  in  elegiac  metre,  in  which 
he  wrote  with  equal  grace  and  skill,  though  not  with  so 
singular  a  mastery.  Among  the  shorter  elegiac  pieces, 
which  are  collected  under  the  title  of  Epigrams,  one,  a  poem 
on  an  old  man  of  Verona  who  had  never  travelled  beyond 
his  own  little  suburban  property,  is  among  the  jewels  of 
Latin  poetry.  The  lines  in  which  he  describes  this  quiet 
garden  life  — 

Frugibus  alternis,  non  consule  computat  annum  ; 

Auctuntnum  pomis,  ver  sibi  flore  notat; 
Idem  condit  ager  soles  idemque  reducit, 

Metiturque  suo  rusticus  orbe  diem, 
Ingentem  meminit  parvo  qui  germine  quercum 

Aequaevumque  videt  consenuisse  nemus  — 

are  in  grace  and  feeling  like  the  very  finest  work  of 
Tibullus ;  and  the  concluding  couplet  — • 

Erret,  et  extremos  alter  scrutetur  Hiberos, 
Plus  habet  hie  vitae,  plus  habet  ille  viae — 

though,  in  its  dependence  on  a  verbal  point,  it  may  not 
satisfy  the  purest  taste,  is  not  without  a  dignity  and  pathos 
that  are  worthy  of  the  large  manner  of  the  classical  period. 


270  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

Claudian  used  the  heroic  hexameter  for  mythological  as 
well  as  historical  epics.  Of  his  Gigantomachia  we  possess 
only  an  inconsiderable  fragment ;  but  the  three  books  of 
the  unfinished  Rape  of  Proserpine  are  among  the  finest 
examples  of  the  purely  literary  epic.  The  description  of 
the  flowery  spring  meadows  where  Proserpine  and  her 
companions  gather  blossoms  for  garlands  is  a  passage  per- 
petually quoted.  It  is  interesting  to  note  how  the  rising 
tide  of  romanticism  has  here,  as  elsewhere,  left  Claudian 
wholly  untouched.  The  passage,  though  elaborately  ornate, 
is  executed  in  the  clear  hard  manner  of  the  Alexandrian 
school ;  it  has  not  a  trace  of  that  sensitiveness  to  nature 
which  vibrates  in  the  Pervigilium  Veneris.  We  have  gone 
back  for  a  moment  to  that  poetical  style  which  perpetually 
reminds  us  of  the  sculptured  friezes  of  Greek  art,  severe  in 
outline,  immensely  adroit  and  learned  in  execution,  but 
a  little  chilly  and  colourless  except  in  the  hands  of  its 
greatest  masters.  After  paying  to  the  full  the  tribute  of 
admiration  which  is  due  to  Claudian's  refined  and  dignified 
workmanship,  we  are  still  left  with  the  feeling  that  this 
kind  of  poetry  was  already  obsolete.  It  is  not  only  that, 
as  has  been  remarked  with  truth  of  his  historical  epics, 
the  elaboration  of  the  treatment  is  disproportionate  to  the 
importance  or  interest  of  the  subject.  Materiam  superabat 
opus  might  be  said  with  equal  truth  of  much  of  the  work 
of  his  predecessors.  But  a  new  spirit  had  by  this  time 
penetrated  literature,  and  any  poetry  wholly  divorced  from 
it  must  be  not  only  artificial  —  for  that  alone  would  prove 
nothing  against  it —  but  unnatural.  Claudian  is  a  precursor 
of  the  Renaissance  in  its  narrower  aspect ;  the  last  of  the 
classics,  he  is  at  the  same  time  the  earliest,  and  one  of 
the  most  distinguished,  of  the  classicists.  It  might  seem 
a  mere  chance  whether  his  poetry  belonged  to  the  fourth 
or  to  the  sixteenth  century. 

In  Claudian's  distinguished  contemporary,  the  Spanish 
poet  Aurelius  Prudentius  Clemens,  Christian  Latin  poetry 


VII.]  Prudentius.  271 

reached  complete  maturity.  His  collected  poems  were 
published  at  Rome  in  404,  the  year  celebrated  by  Claudian 
as  that  of  the  sixth  consulship  of  Honorius.  Before  Pru- 
dentius, Christian  poetry  had  been  slight  in  amount  and 
rude  or  tentative  in  manner.  We  have  already  had  occa- 
sion to  notice  its  earliest  efforts  in  the  rude  verses  of 
Commodianus.  The  revival  of  letters  in  the  fourth  century, 
so  far  as  it  went,  affected  Christian  as  well  as  secular 
poetry.  Under  Constantine,  a  Spanish  deacon,  one  Gaius 
Vettius  Aquilinus  Juvencus,  put  the  Gospel  narrative  into 
respectable  hexameters,  which  are  still  extant.  The  poems 
and  hymns  which  have  come  down  under  the  name  of 
Bishop  Hilary  of  Poitiers  are  probably  spurious,  and  a 
similar  doubt  attaches  to  those  ascribed  to  the  eminent 
grammarian  and  rhetorician,  Gaius  Marius  Victorinus,  after 
his  conversion.  Before  Prudentius  published  his  collection, 
the  hymns  of  St.  Ambrose  had  been  written,  and  were 
in  use  among  the  Western  Churches.  But  these,  though 
they  formed  the  type  for  all  later  hymn-writers,  were  few 
in  number.  Out  of  the  so-called  Ambrosian  hymns  a 
rigorous  criticism  only  allows  five  or  six  as  authentic. 
These,  however,  include  two  world-famed  pieces,  still  in 
daily  use  by  the  Church,  the  Aeterne  rerum  Conditor  and 
the  Deus  Creator  omnium,  and  the  equally  famous  Vent 
Redemptor, 

To  the  form  thus  established  by  St.  Ambrose,  Prudentius, 
in  his  two  books  of  lyrical  poems,  gave  a  larger  volume 
and  a  more  sustained  literary  power.  The  Cathemerina, 
a  series  of  poems  on  the  Christian  life,  and  the  Periste- 
phanon,  a  book  of  the  praise  of  Christian  martyrs  —  St. 
Lawrence,  St.  Vincent,  St.  Agnes,  among  other  less  cele- 
brated names  —  at  once  represent  the  most  substantial 
addition  made  to  Latin  lyrical  poetry  since  Horace,  and 
tihe  complete  triumph  of  the  new  religion.  They  are  not, 
like  the  Ambrosian  hymns,  brief  pieces  meant  for  actual 
singing  in  churches.  Out  of  the  twenty-six  poems  only 


272  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

three  are  under  one  hundred  lines  in  length,  and  that  on 
the  martyrdom  of  St.  Romanus  of  Antioch  runs  to  no  less 
than  eleven  hundred  and  forty,  almost  the  proportions  of 
a  small  epic.  But  in  the  brilliance  and  vigour  of  their 
language,  their  picturesque  style,  and  the  new  joy  that, 
in  spite  of  their  asceticism,  burns  throughout  them,  they 
gave  an  impulse  of  immense  force  towards  the  development 
of  Christian  literature.  In  merely  technical  quality  they 
are  superior  to  any  poetry  of  the  time,  Claudian  alone 
excepted ;  in  their  fulness  of  life,  in  the  exultant  tone  which 
kindles  and  sustains  them,  they  make  Claudian  grow  pale 
like  a  candle-flame  at  dawn. 

With  Prudentius,  however,  as  with  Claudian,  we  have 
almost  passed  beyond  the  strict  limit  of  a  history  of  ancient 
Latin  literature  :  and  any  fuller  discussion,  either  of  these 
remarkable  lyrical  pieces,  or  of  his  more  voluminous  ex- 
pository or  controversial  treatises  in  hexameter,  properly 
belongs  to  a  history  of  the  Christian  Church.  The  two 
most  eminent  and  copious  prose  writers  of  the  later  fourth 
century,  Jerome  and  Augustine,  occupy  the  same  am- 
biguous position.  Apart  from  them,  and  from  the  less 
celebrated  Christian  writers  who  were  their  predecessors  or 
contemporaries,  the  prose  of  the  fourth  century  is  both 
small  in  amount  and  insignificant  in  quality.  The  revival 
in  verse  composition  which  followed  the  settlement  of  the 
Empire  under  Constantine  scarcely  spread  to  the  less 
imitable  art  of  prose.  The  school  of  eminent  Roman 
grammarians  who  flourished  about  the  middle  of  the 
century,  and  among  whom  Servius  and  Donatus  are  the 
leading  names,  while  they  commented  on  ancient  master- 
pieces with  inexhaustible  industry,  and  often  with  really 
sound  judgment,  wrote  themselves  in  a  base  and  formless 
style.  A  few  authors  of  technical  manuals  and  epitomes 
of  history  rise  a  little  above  the  common  level,  or  have 
a  casual  importance  from  the  contents  of  their  works.  The 
treatises  on  husbandry  by  Palladius,  and  on  the  art  of  war 


VII.]  Ammianus  Marcellinus.  273 

by  Flavius  Vegetius  Renatus,  became,  to  a  certain  degree, 
standard  works;  the  little  handbooks  of  Roman  history 
written  in  the  reigns  of  Constantius  and  Valens  by  Aurelius 
Victor  and  Eutropius  are  simple  and  unpretentious,  but 
have  little  positive  merit.  The  age  produced  but  one 
Latin  historian,  Ammianus  Marcellinus.  Like  Claudian, 
he  was  of  Asiatic  origin,  and  Greek-speaking  by  birth,  but, 
in  the  course  of  his  service  on  the  staff  of  the  captain- 
general  of  the  imperial  cavalry,  had  spent  much  of  his  life 
in  the  Latin  provinces  of  Gaul  and  Italy;  and  his  history 
was  written  at  Rome,  where  he  lived  after  retiring  from 
active  service.  The  task  he  set  himself,  a  history  of  the 
Empire,  in  continuation  of  that  of  Tacitus,  from  the  acces- 
sion of  Nerva  to  the  death  of  Valens,  was  one  of  great 
scope  and  unusual  complexity.  He  brought  to  it  some 
at  least  of  the  gifts  of  the  historian  :  intelligence,  honesty, 
tolerance,  a  large  amount  of  good  sense.  But  his  Latin, 
which  he  never  came  to  write  with  the  ease  of  a  native, 
is  difficult  and  confused ;  and  to  this,  probably,  should  be 
ascribed  the  early  disappearance  of  the  greater  part  of  his 
history.  The  last  eighteen  books,  containing  the  history 
of  only  five  and  twenty  years,  have  survived.  The  greater 
part  of  the  period  which  they  cover  is  one  of  decay  and 
wretchedness ;  but  the  account  they  give  of  the  reign  of 
Julian  (whom  Ammianus  had  himself  accompanied  in  his 
Persian  campaign)  is  of  great  interest,  and  his  portrait  of 
the  feeble  incapable  rule  of  Julian's  successors,  distracted 
between  barbarian  inroads  and  theological  disputes,  is 
drawn  with  a  firm  and  almost  a  masterly  hand. 

The  Emperor  Valens  fell,  together  with  nearly  the  whole 
of  a  great  Roman  army,  in  the  disastrous  battle  of  Adria- 
nople.  A  Visigothic  horde,  to  the  number  of  two  hundred 
thousand  fighting  men,  had  crossed  the  Danube ;  and  the 
Huns  and  Alans,  names  even  more  terrible,  joined  the  stan- 
dards of  Fritigern  with  a  countless  host  of  Mongolian  cavalry. 
The  heart  of  the  Empire  lay  helpless ;  Constantinople  itself 


274  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

was  besieged  by  the  conquerors.  The  elevation  of  Theo- 
dosius  to  the  purple  bore  back  for  a  time  the  tide  of 
disaster;  once  more  the  civilised  world  staggered  to  its 
feet,  but  with  strength  and  courage  fatally  broken.  At 
this  dramatic  moment  in  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire 
the  last  of  the  Latin  historians  closes  his  narrative. 


via 

THE   BEGINNINGS   OF  THE   MIDDLE  AGES. 

IN  August  410,  while  the  Emperor  Honorius  fed  his 
poultry  among  the  impenetrable  marshes  of  Ravenna,  Rome 
was  sacked  by  a  mixed  army  of  Goths  and  Huns  under 
the  command  of  Alaric.  Eight  hundred  years  had  elapsed 
since  the  imperial  city  had  been  in  foreign  possession ;  and, 
though  it  had  ceased  to  be  the  actual  seat  of  government, 
the  shock  spread  by  its  capture  through  the  entire  Roman 
world  was  of  unparalleled  magnitude.  Six  years  later, 
a  wealthy  and  distinguished  resident,  one  Claudius  Rutilius 
Namatianus,  was  obliged  to  take  a  journey  to  look  after  the 
condition  of  his  estates  in  the  south  of  France,  which  had 
been  devastated  by  a  band  of  wandering  Visigoths.  A 
large  portion  is  extant  of  the  poem  in  which  he  described 
this  journey,  one  of  the  most  charming  among  poems  of 
travel,  and  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  fragments 
of  early  mediaeval  literature.  Nowhere  else  can  we  see 
portrayed  so  strongly  the  fascination  which  Rome  then  still 
possessed  for  the  whole  of  Western  Europe,  and  the 
adoration  with  which  she  was  still  regarded  as  mother  and 
light  of  the  world.  The  magical  statue  had  been  cast  away> 
with  other  heathen  idols,  from  the  imperial  bedchamber; 
but  the  Fortuna  Urbis  itself,  the  mystical  divinity  which 
the  statue  represented,  still  exercised  an  overwhelming 
influence  over  men's  imagination.  After  all  the  praises 
lavished  on  her  for  centuries  by  so  many  of  her  illustrious 

275 


276  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

children,  it  was  left  for  this  foreigner,  in  the  age  of  her 
decay,  to  pay  her  the  most  complete  and  most  splendid 
eulogy :  — 

Quod  regnas  minus  est  quant  quod  regnare  mereris  ; 

Excedis  factis  grandia  fata  tuis : 
Nam  so/is  radiis  aequalia  munera  tendis, 

Qua  circumfusus  fluctuat  oceanus. 
Fecisti patriam  diversis  gcntibus  unam  : 

Profuit  invitis  te  dominante  capi ; 
Dumque  offers  victis  proprii  consortia  tun's, 

Urbemfecisti  quod prius  orbis  erat. 

In  this  noble  apostrophe  Rutilius  addressed  the  fading 
mistress  of  the  world  as  he  passed  lingeringly  through  the 
Ostian  gate.  Far  away  in  Northern  Africa,  the  most 
profound  thinker  and  most  brilliant  writer  of  the  age,  as 
deeply  but  very  differently  moved  by  the  ancestral  splen- 
dours of  the  city  and  the  tragedy  of  her  fall,  was  then 
composing,  with  all  the  resources  of  his  vast  learning  and 
consummate  dialectical  skill,  the  epitaph  of  the  ancient 
civilisation.  It  was  the  capture  of  Rome  by  Alaric  which 
induced  St.  Augustine  to  undertake  his  work  on  the  City 
of  God.  "  In  this  middle  age,"  he  says,  —  in  hoc  interim 
seculo  —  the  two  cities  with  their  two  citizenships,  the 
earthly  and  the  heavenly,  are  inextricably  enwound  and 
intermingled  with  each  other.  Not  until  the  Last  Judg- 
ment will  they  be  wholly  separated  ;  but  the  philosophy  of 
history  is  to  trace  the  steps  by  which  the  one  is  slowly 
replaced  by,  or  transformed  into,  the  other.  The  earthly 
Empire,  all  the  splendid  achievement  in  thought  and  arts 
and  deeds  of  the  Roman  civilisation,  already  fades  away 
before  that  City  of  God  on  which  his  eyes  are  fixed  — 
gloriosissimam  Civitatem  Dei,  sive  in  hoc  temporum  cursu 
cum  inter  impios  peregrinatur  ex  fide  vivens,  sive  in  ilia 
stabilitate  sedis  aeternae,  quam  nunc  exspectat per  patientiam, 
quoadusque  iustitia  convertatur  in  iudicium. 


VIII.]          The  End  of  the  Ancient    World.  277 

The  evolution  of  this  change  was,  even  to  the  impassioned 
faith  of  Augustine,  slow,  intermittent,  and  fluctuating :  nor, 
among  many  landmarks  and  turning-points,  is  it  easy  to  fix 
any  single  one  as  definitely  concluding  the  life  of  the 
ancient  world,  and  marking  the  beginning  of  what  St. 
Augustine  for  the  first  time  called  by  the  name,  which  has 
ever  since  adhered  to  it,  of  the  Middle  Age.  The  old 
world  slid  into  the  new  through  insensible  gradations.  In 
nearly  all  Latin  literature  after  Virgil  we  may  find  traces 
or  premonitions  of  mediaevalism,  and  after  mediaevalism 
was  established  it  long  retained,  if  it  ever  wholly  lost, 
traces  of  the  classical  tradition.  Thus,  while  the  beginning 
of  Latin  literature  may  be  definitely  placed  in  a  particular 
generation,  and  almost  in  a  single  year,  there  is  no  fixed 
point  at  which  it  can  be  said  that  its  history  concludes. 
Different  periods  have  been  assigned  from  different  points 
•f  view.  In  the  year  476,  Romulus  Augustulus,  the  last  of 
the  Western  Emperors,  handed  over  the  name  as  well  as 
the  substance  of  sole  power  to  the  Herulian  chief  Odoacer, 
the  first  King  of  Italy ;  and  the  Roman  Senate,  still  in 
theory  the  supreme  governing  body  of  the  civilised  world, 
formally  renounced  its  sovereignty,  and  declared  its  domin- 
ions a  diocese  of  the  Byzantine  Empire.  This  is  the 
date  generally  adopted  by  authors  who  deal  with  literature 
as  subordinate  to  political  history.  But  the  writer  of  the 
standard  English  work  on  Latin  grammar  limits  his  field 
to  the  period  included  between  Plautus  and  Suetonius ; 
while  another  scholar,  extending  his  scope  three  centuries 
and  a  half  further,  has  written  a  history  of  Latin  literature 
from  Ennius  to  Boethius.  Suetonius  and  Boethius  probably 
represent  the  extreme  variation  of  limit  which  can  be 
reasonably  adopted;  but  between  them  they  leave  room 
for  many  points  of  pause.  Up  to  the  end  of  the  fourth 
century  we  have  followed  a  stream  of  tendency,  not,  indeed, 
continuous,  but  yet  without  any  absolute  rupture.  Between 
the  writers  of  the  fourth  century  and  their  few  successors 


278  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

of  the  fifth  there  is  no  marked  change  in  language  or 
manner.  Sidonius  Apollinaris  continues  more  feebly  the 
style  of  poetry  initiated  a  century  before  him  by  Ausonius. 
Boethius  wrote  his  fine  treatise  On  the  Consolation  of 
Philosophy  half  a  century  after  the  extinction  of  the  Empire 
of  the  West.  By  a  strange  freak  of  history,  it  was  at  the 
Greek  capital  that  Latin  scholarship  finally  faded  away. 
Priscian  and  Tribonian  wrote  at  Constantinople ;  and  the 
Western  world  received  its  most  authoritative  works  on 
Latin  grammar  and  Roman  law,  not  from  the  Latin  Empire, 
nor  from  one  of  the  Latin-speaking  kingdoms  which  rose 
on  its  ruins,  but  from  the  half-oriental  courts  of  Anastasius 
and  Justinian. 

The  two  long  lives  of  the  great  Latin  fathers,  Jerome  and 
Augustine,  cover  conjointly  a  space  of  just  a  century. 
Jerome  was  born  probably  a  few  months  after  the  main 
seat  of  empire  was  formally  transferred  to  New  Rome  by 
Constantine.  Augustine,  born  twenty-three  years  later, 
died  in  his  cathedral  city  of  Hippo  during  its  siege  by 
Genseric  in  the  brief  war  which  transformed  Africa  from  a 
Roman  province  to  a  Vandal  kingdom.  The  City  of  God 
had  been  completed  four  years  previously.  A  quarter  of 
a  century  before  the  death  of  Augustine,  Jerome  issued, 
from  his  monastery  at  Bethlehem,  the  Latin  translation  of 
the  Bible  which,  on  its  own  merits,  and  still  more  if  we 
give  weight  to  its  overwhelming  influence  on  later  ages,  is 
the  greatest  literary  masterpiece  of  the  Lower  Empire.  Our 
own  Authorised  Version  has  deeply  affected  all  post- 
Shakespearian  English ;  the  Vulgate  of  Jerome,  which  was 
from  time  to  time  revised  in  detail,  but  still  remains  sub- 
stantially as  it  issued  from  his  hands,  had  an  equally 
profound  influence  over  a  vastly  greater  space  and  time. 
It  was  for  Europe  of  the  Middle  Ages  more  than  Homer 
was  to  Greece.  The  year  405,  which  witnessed  its  publica- 
tion and  that  of  the  last  of  the  poems  of  Claudian  to 
which  we  can  assign  a  certain  date,  may  claim  to  be  held 


VII1.J  First  Period.  279 

if  any  definite  point  is  to  be  fixed,  as  marking  the  end  of 
ancient  and  the  complete  establishment  of  mediaeval 
Latin. 

In  the  six  and  a  half  centuries  which  had  passed  since 
the  Greek  prisoner  of  war  from  Tarentum  produced  the 
first  Latin  play  in  the  theatre  of  the  mid-Italian  Republic 
which  was  celebrating  her  victories  over  the  formidable 
sea-power  of  Carthage,  Latin  literature  had  shared  the 
vicissitudes  of  the  Roman  State ;  and  the  successive  stages 
of  its  development  and  decay  are  intimately  connected  with 
the  political  and  social  changes  which  are  the  matter  of 
Roman  history.  A  century  passed  between  the  conclusion 
of  the  first  Punic  war  and  the  tribunate  of  Tiberius 
Gracchus.  It  was  a  period  for  the  Republic  of  internal 
tranquillity  and  successful  foreign  war.  At  its  conclusion, 
Italy  was  organised  under  Roman  control.  Greece, 
Macedonia,  Spain,  and  Africa  had  become  subject  prov- 
inces; a  Roman  protectorate  was  established  in  Egypt, 
and  the  Asiatic  provinces  of  the  Macedonian  Empire  only 
preserved  a  precarious  and  partial  independence.  During 
this  century,  Latin  literature  had  firmly  established  itself  in 
a  broad  and  vigorous  growth.  Dramatic  and  epic  poetry, 
based  on  diligent  study  of  the  best  Greek  models,  formed 
a  substantial  body  of  actual  achievement,  and  under  Greek 
impulse  the  Latin  language  was  being  wrought  into  a  medium 
of  expression  at  once  dignified  and  copious,  a  substance 
capable  of  indefinite  expansion  and  use  in  the  hands  of 
trained  artists.  Prose  was  rapidly  overtaking  verse.  The 
schools  of  law,  and  the  oratory  of  the  senate-house  and  the 
forum,  were  developing  national  forms  of  literature  on 
distinctively  Roman  lines :  a  beginning  had  been  made  in 
the  more  difficult  field  of  history;  and  the  invention  and 
popularisation  of  the  satire,  or  mixed  form  of  familiar  prose 
and  verse,  began  to  enlarge  the  scope  of  literature  over  a 
broader  field  of  life  and  thought,  while  immensely  adding 
to  the  flexibility  and  range  of  the  written  language. 


280  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

A  century  followed  during  which  Roman  rule  was 
extended  and  consolidated  over  the  whole  area  of  the 
countries  fringing  the  Mediterranean,  while  concurrently 
a  long  series  of  revolutions  and  counter-revolutions  ended 
in  the  overthrow  of  the  republican  oligarchy,  and  the 
establishment  of  the  imperial  government.  Beginning  with 
the  democratic  movement  of  the  Gracchi,  this  century 
includes  the  civil  wars  of  Marius  and  Sulla,  the  temporary 
reconstitution  of  the  oligarchy,  the  renewed  outbreak  of  war 
between  Julius  Caesar  and  the  senate,  and  the  confused 
period  of  administrative  anarchy  which  was  terminated  by 
the  rise  of  Augustus  to  a  practical  dictatorship,  and  the 
arrangement  by  him  of  a  working  compromise  between  the 
two  great  opposing  forces.  During  this  century  of  revolu- 
tion the  whole  attitude  of  Rome  towards  the  problems 
both  of  internal  and  of  foreign  politics  was  forced  through 
a  series  of  important  changes.  The  revolt  of  Italy,  which, 
after  bringing  Rome  to  the  verge  of  destruction,  was  finally 
crushed  by  the  Asiatic  legions  of  Sulla,  was  almost  im- 
mediately followed  by  the  unification  of  Italy,  and  her 
practical  absorption  into  the  Roman  citizenship.  With 
renewed  and  enlarged  life,  Rome  then  entered  on  a  second 
extension  of  her  dominions.  The  annexation  of  Syria  and 
the  conquest  of  Gaul  completed  the  circle  of  her  empire ; 
the  subjugation  of  Spain  was  completed,  and  the  Eastern 
frontier  pushed  towards  Armenia  and  the  Euphrates ; 
finally  Egypt,  the  last  survivor  of  the  kingdoms  founded  by 
Alexander's  generals,  passed  wholly  into  Roman  hands 
with  the  extinction  of  its  own  royal  house. 

During  this  period  of  perpetual  excitement  and  high 
political  tension,  literature,  in  the  forms  both  of  prose  and 
verse,  rapidly  grew  towards  maturity,  and,  in  the  former 
fielu  at  least,  reached  its  perfection.  Oratory,  the  great 
weapon  of  politicians  under  the  unique  Republican  con- 
stitution, was  in  its  golden  age.  Greek  culture  had  per- 
meated the  governing  class.  History  began  to  be  written 


VIII.]  Second  and  Third  Periods.  281 

by  trained  statesmen,  whose  education  for  the  command 
of  armies  and  the  rule  of  provinces  had  been  based  on 
elaborate  linguistic  and  rhetorical  study.  Alongside  of 
grammar  and  rhetoric,  poetry  and  philosophy  took  a  place 
as  part  of  the  higher  education  of  the  citizen.  The  habit 
and  capacity  of  abstract  thought  reached  Rome  from  the 
schools  of  Athens ;  with  the  growing  power  of  expression 
and  the  increased  tension  of  actual  life,  the  science  of 
politics  and  the  philosophy  of  life  and  conduct  became  the 
material  of  a  new  and  splendid  literature.  Along  with  the 
world  of  ideas  diffused  by  Athens  there  arrived  the  immense 
learning  and  high  technical  skill  of  the  Alexandrian  scholars 
and  poets.  Roman  poetry  set  itself  anew  to  learn  the 
Greek  lesson  of  exquisite  form  and  perfect  finish.  In  the 
hands  of  two  poets  of  the  first  order,  and  of  a  crowd  of 
lesser  students,  the  conquest  of  poetical  form  passed  its 
crucial  point,  and  the  way  was  prepared  for  the  consumma- 
tion of  Latin  poetry  in  the  next  age. 

Another  century  carries  us  from  the  establishment  of  the 
Empire  by  Augustus  to  the  extinction  of  his  family  at  the 
death  of  Nero.  At  the  opening  of  this  period  the  Empire 
was  exhausted  by  civil  war,  and  welcomed  any  form  of 
settled  rule.  The  settlement  of  the  constitution,  based  as 
it  was  on  a  number  of  elaborate  legal  fictions  meant  to 
combine  republican  forms  with  the  reality  of  a  strong 
monarchical  government,  left  the  political  situation  in  a 
state  of  very  unstable  equilibrium ;  all  through  the  century 
the  government  was  in  an  uncertain  or  even  a  false 
position,  and,  when  Nero's  misrule  had  made  it  intolerable, 
it  collapsed  with  a  crash  which  almost  shivered  the  Empire 
into  fragments.  But  it  had  lasted  long  enough  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  the  new  and  larger  Rome  broadly  and 
securely.  The  provinces,  while  still  in  a  sense  subordinate 
to  Italy,  had  already  become  organic  parts  of  the  Empire, 
instead  of  subject  countries.  The  haughty  and  obstinate 
Roman  oligarchy  was  tamed  by  long  years  of  proscription, 


282  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

confiscation,  perpetual  surveillance,  careful  exclusion  from 
great  political  power.  The  municipal  institutions  and  civic 
energy  of  Rome  were  multiplied  in  a  thousand  centres  of 
local  life.  Internal  peace  allowed  commerce  and  civilisa- 
tion to  spread ;  in  spite  of  the  immense  drain  caused  by 
the  extravagance  of  the  capital  and  the  expense  of  the 
great  frontier  armies,  the  provinces  generally  rose  to  a 
higher  state  of  material  welfare  than  they  had  enjoyed 
since  their  annexation. 

The  earlier  years  of  this  century  are  the  most  brilliant  in 
the  history  of  Latin  literature.  During  the  last  fifty  years 
of  the  Republic  a  series  of  Roman  authors  of  remarkable 
genius  had  gradually  met  and  mastered  the  technical 
problems  of  both  prose  and  verse.  The  new  generation 
entered  into  their  labours.  In  prose  there  was  little,  if 
any,  advance  remaining  to  be  made.  In  the  fields  of 
oratory  and  philosophy  it  had  already  reached  its  perfec- 
tion ;  in  that  of  history  it  acquired  further  amplitude  and 
colour.  But  the  achievement  of  the  new  age  was  mainly 
in  verse.  Profound  study  of  the  older  poetry,  and  the  labori- 
ous training  learned  from  the  schools  of  Alexandria,  now 
bore  fruit  in  a  body  of  poetry  which,  in  every  field  except 
that  of  the  drama,  excelled  what  had  hitherto  been  known, 
and  was  at  once  the  model  and  the  limit  for  succeeding 
generations.  Latin  poetry,  like  the  Empire  itself,  took  a 
broader  basis ;  the  Augustan  poets  are  still  Romans,  but 
this  is  because  Rome  had  extended  itself  over  Italy. 

The  copious  and  splendid  production  of  the  earlier  years 
of  the  principate  of  Augustus  was  followed  by  an  almost 
inevitable  reaction.  The  energy  of  the  Latin  speech  had 
for  the  time  exhausted  itself;  and  the  political  necessities 
of  the  uneasy  reigns  which  followed  set  further  barriers  in 
the  way  of  a  weakening  literary  impulse.  Then  begins  the 
movement  of  the  Latin-speaking  provinces.  Rome  had 
absorbed  Italy ;  Italy  in  turn  begins  to  absorb  and  coalesce 
with  Gaul,  Spain,  and  Africa.  The  first  of  the  provinces 


VIII.]  Fourth  Period.  283 

in  the  field  was  Spain,  which  had  become  Latinised  earlier 
than  either  of  the  others.  At  the  court  of  Nero  a  single 
brilliant  Spanish  family  founded  a  new  and  striking  style, 
which  for  the  moment  eclipsed  that  formed  by  a  purer  taste 
amid  a  graver  and  a  more  exclusive  public. 

A  hundred  years  from  the  downfall  of  Nero  carry  us 
down  to  the  reign  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  The  Empire,  when 
it  recovered  from  the  collapse  of  the  year  69,  assumed  a 
settled  and  stable  organisation.  Traditions  of  the  old 
jealousies  and  discontents  lingered  during  the  reigns  of 
the  three  Flavian  Emperors ;  but  the  imperial  system  had 
now  got  into  permanent  working  order.  The  cataclysm 
which  followed  the  deposition  of  Nero  is  in  the  strongest 
contrast  to  the  ease  and  smoothness,  only  broken  by  a 
trifling  mutiny  of  the  praetorian  guards,  with  which  the 
principate  passed  into  the  hands  of  Nerva  after  the  murder 
of  Domitian. 

This  century  is  what  is  properly  known  as  the  Silver 
Age.  A  school  of  eminent  writers,  in  whom  the  provincial 
and  the  Italian  quality  are  now  hardly  to  be  distinguished, 
produced  during  its  earlier  years  a  large  body  of  admirable 
prose  and  not  undistinguished  verse.  But  before  the 
century  was  half  over,  the  signs  of  decay  began  to  appear. 
A  mysterious  languor  overcame  thought  and  art,  as  it  did 
the  whole  organism  of  the  Empire.  The  conquests  of 
Trajan,  the  peace  and  material  splendour  of  the  reign  of 
Hadrian,  were  followed  by  a  series  of  years  almost  without 
events,  suddenly  broken  by  the  appalling  pestilence  of  the 
year  166,  and  the  outbreak,  at  the  same  time,  of  a  long  and 
desperate  war  on  the  northern  frontiers.  During  these 
eventless  years  Latin  literature  seemed  to  die  away.  The 
classical  impulse  was  exhausted ;  the  attempts  made  to- 
wards founding  a  new  Latin  bore,  for  the  time,  little  fruit. 
Before  this  period  of  exhaustion  and  reaction  could  come 
to  a  natural  end,  two  changes  of  momentous  importance 
had  overtaken  the  world.  The  imperial  system  broke  down 


284  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

under  Commodus.  All  through  the  third  century  the  civil 
organisation  of  the  Empire  was  at  the  mercy  of  military 
adventurers.  Twenty-five  recognised  emperors,  besides  a 
swarm  of  pretenders,  most  of  them  raised  to  the  purple 
by  mutinous  armies,  succeeded  one  another  in  the  hundred 
years  between  Commodus  and  Diocletian.  At  the  same 
time  the  Christian  religion,  already  recognised  under  the 
Antonines  as  a  grave  menace  to  the  very  existence  of  the 
Empire,  was  extending  itself  year  by  year,  rising  more 
elastic  than  ever  from  each  fresh  persecution,  and  attract- 
ing towards  itself  all  the  vital  forces  which  go  to  make 
literature. 

The  coalition  between  the  Empire  and  the  Church,  which, 
after  various  tentative  preliminaries,  was  finally  effected  by 
Constantine,  launched  the  world  upon  new  paths :  and  his 
transference  of  the  main  seat  of  empire  to  the  shores  of  the 
Bosporus  left  Western  Europe  to  pursue  fragmentary  and 
independent  courses.  The  Latin-speaking  provinces  were 
falling  away  in  great  lumps.  An  independent  empire  of 
Britain  had  already  existed  for  six  or  seven  years  under  the 
usurper  Carausius.  After  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century 
Gaul  was  practically  in  possession  of  the  Visigoths  and  the 
Salian  Franks.  During  the  reign  of  Honorius  mixed  hordes 
of  Vandals,  Suabians,  and  Alans  poured  through  Gaul 
across  the  Pyrenees,  and  divided  Spain  into  barbarian 
monarchies.  A  few  years  later  the  Vandals,  called  across 
the  straits  of  Gibraltar  by  the  treachery  of  Count  Boniface, 
overran  the  province  of  Africa,  and  established  a  powerful 
kingdom,  whose  fleets,  issuing  from  the  port  of  Carthage, 
swept  the  Mediterranean  and  sacked  Rome  itself.  Rome 
had,  by  the  famous  edict  of  Antoninus  Caracalla,  given 
the  world  a  single  citizenship ;  to  give  organic  life  to  that 
citizenship,  and  turn  her  citizens  into  a  single  nation,  was 
a  task  beyond  her  power.  So  long  as  the  Latin-speaking 
world  remained  nominally  subject  to  a  single  rule,  exercised 
in  the  name  of  the  Senate  and  People  of  Rome,  Latin 


VIIL]  The   World  after  Rome.  285 

literature  had  some  slight  external  bond  of  unity ;  after  the 
Western  Empire  was  shattered  into  a  dozen  independent 
kingdoms,  the  phrase  almost  ceases  to  have  any  real 
meaning.  I/atin,  in  one  form  or  another,  remained  an 
Almost  universal  language ;  but  we  must  speak  henceforth 
of  the  literatures  of  France  or  Spain  or  Britain,  whether  the 
work  produced  be  written  in  a  provincial  dialect  or  in  the 
international  language  handed  down  from  the  Empire  and 
preserved  by  the  Church. 

For  the  Catholic  Church  now  became  the  centre  of 
European  cohesion,  and  gave  continuity  and  common  life 
to  the  scattered  remains  of  the  ancient  civilisation.  Already, 
in  the  fifth  century,  Pope  Leo  the  Great  is  a  more  important 
figure  than  his  contemporary,  Valentinian  the  Second,  for 
thirty  years  the  shadowy  and  impotent  Emperor  of  the 
West.  Christian  literature  had  taken  firm  root  while  the 
classical  tradition  was  still  strong ;  in  the  hands  of  men  like 
Jerome  and  Augustine  that  tradition  was  caught  up  from 
the  wreck  of  the  Empire  and  handed  down,  not  unimpaired, 
yet  still  in  prodigious  force  and  vitality,  to  the  modern  world. 

Latin  is  now  no  longer  a  universal  language ;  and  the 
direct  influence  of  ancient  Rome,  which  once  seemed  like 
an  immortal  energy,  is  at  last,  like  all  energies,  becoming 
slowly  absorbed  in  its  own  results.  Yet  the  Latin  language 
is  still  the  necessary  foundation  of  one  half  of  human 
knowledge,  and  the  forms  created  by  Roman  genius  underlie 
the  whole  of  our  civilisation.  So  long  as  mankind  look 
before  and  after,  the  name  of  Rome  will  be  the  greatest  of 
those  upon  which  their  backward  gaze  can  be  turned.  In 
Greece  men  first  learned  to  be  human  :  under  Rome  man- 
kind first  learned  to  be  civilised.  Law,  government,  citizen- 
ship, are  all  the  creations  of  the  Latin  race.  At  a  thousand 
points  we  still  draw  directly  from  the  Roman  sources. 
The  codes  of  Latin  jurists  are  the  direct  source  of  all 
systems  of  modern  law.  The  civic  organisation  which  it 
was  the  great  work  of  the  earlier  Roman  Empire  to  spread 


286  Latin  Literature.  [III. 

throughout  the  provinces  is  the  basis  of  our  municipal 
institutions  and  our  corporate  social  life.  The  names  of 
our  months  are  those  of  the  Latin  year,  and  the  modern 
calendar  is,  with  one  slight  alteration,  that  established  by 
Julius  Caesar.  The  head  of  the  Catholic  Church  is  still 
called  by  the  name  of  the  president  of  a  Republican  college 
which  goes  back  beyond  the  beginnings  of  ascertained 
Roman  history.  The  architecture  which  we  inherit  from 
the  Middle  Ages,  associated  by  an  accident  of  history  with 
the  name  of  the  Goths,  had  its  origin  under  the  Empire, 
and  may  be  traced  down  to  modern  times,  step  by  step, 
from  the  basilica  of  Trajan  and  the  palace  of  Diocletian. 
These  are  but  a  few  instances  of  the  inheritance  we  have 
received  from  Rome.  But  behind  the  ordered  structure  of 
her  law  and  government,  and  the  majestic  fabric  of  her 
civilisation,  lay  a  vital  force  of  even  deeper  import ;  the 
strong  grave  Roman  character,  which  has  permanently 
heightened  the  ideal  of  human  life.  It  is  in  their  literature 
that  the  inner  spirit  of  the  Latin  race  found  its  most 
complete  expression.  In  the  stately  structure  of  that 
imperial  language  they  embodied  those  qualities  which 
make  the  Roman  name  most  abidingly  great  —  honour, 
temperate  wisdom,  humanity,  courtesy,  magnanimity ;  and 
the  civilised  world  still  returns  to  that  fountain-head,  and 
finds  a  second  mother-tongue  in  the  speech  of  Cicero  and 
Virgil. 


INDEX   OF  AUTHORS 


PAGE 

Accius,  L. 12 

Aelius,  P 29 

Aelius,  Sex 29 

Aemilianus,    Palladius    Ru- 

tilius  Taurus        272 

Afranius,  L 15 

Africanus,      P.      Cornelius 

Scipio  Aemilianus         ...  33 

Agrippa,  M.            162 

Albinus,  Clodius     262 

Alimentus,  L.  Cincius      ...  28 

Ambrosius       265,  271 

Andronicus,  L.  Livius      ...  4 

Antias,  Valerius      37 

Antipater,  L.  Caelius        ...  33 

Antonius,  M.           36 

Apollinaris,  see  Sidonius. 

Apuleius,  L 238 

Arbiter,  Petronius 183 

Arnobius        255 

Asconius,  see  Pedianus. 

Asper,  Aemilius      204 

Atta,  Quinctius        15 

Atticus,  T.  Pomponius          74,  86 
Augustus,  G.  Julius  Caesar 

Octavianus 121,  162 

Ausonius,  Dec.  Magnus  . . .  265 

Bassus,  Caesius       1 78 

Bassus,  Saleius        192 

Boethius,    Anicius    Manlius 

Torquatus  Severinus     . . .  278 

Brutus,  M.  Junius 30 


Caecilius,  Statius     . . , 
Caecus,  Ap.  Claudius 


16 

30 


Caelius,  see  Antipater. 
Caelius,  see  Rufus. 

Caesar,  G.  Julius    78 

Caesar,  Tib.  Claudius  Dru- 

sus  Nero 157 

Calpurnius,  see  Siculus. 

Calvus,  G.  Licinius  Macer  53 

Capitolinus,  Julius 263 

Carus,  T.  Lucretius          ...  39 
Cassius,  see  Hemina. 

Cato,  M.  Porcius     30 

Catullus,  G.  Valerius        ...  53 

Celsus,  A.  Cornelius         ...  165 

Cicero,  M.  Tullius 62 

Cicero,  Q.  Tullius 86 

Cincius,  see  Alimentus. 

Cinna,  G.  Helvius 52 

Claud  ianus,  Claudius        . . .  267 
Claudius,  see  Caecus. 

Clemens,  Aurelius  Prudentius  270 
Columella,  L.  Junius  Mod- 

eratus         181 

Commodianus          257 

Corbulo,  Domitius 1 80 

Cornificius     36 

Crassus,  L.  Licinius         ...  36 

Crispus,  G.  Sallustius       ...  82 
Curtius,  see  Rufus. 

Cyprianus,  Thascius  Caecilius  254 

Donatus,  Aelius      272 


Ennius,  Q. 
Eumenius 
Eutropius 


265 
273 


287 


288 


Index  of  Authors. 


PAGE 

Fabius,  see  Pictor. 
Fannius,  G  33 
Felix,  Minucius       249 
Festus,  Sex.  Pompeius     ...      165 
Flaccus,  Q.  Horatius       .  .  .      106 
P'laccus,  A.  Persius            ...      178 
Flaccus,  G.  Valerius        .  .  .      190 

1 

Lucanus,  M.  Annaeus 
Lucilius,  G  

Lucilius,  see  Junior. 
Lucretius,  see  Carus. 
Lygdamus      

ACB 

'75 
33 

130 

122 

Flaccus,  M.  Verrius         ...      165 
Florus,    Julius   (or  Lucius) 
Annaeus     229 
Froutinus,  Sex.  Julius      .  .  .      197 
Fronto,  M.  Cornelius       .  .  .     234 
Frugi,  L.  Calpurnius  Piso            28 

Gaius      229 

Macer,  G.  Licinius 
Macer,  see  Calvus. 
Maecenas,  G.  Cilnius 
Manilius,  G.  (or  M.) 
Manilius,  M-'.        
Marcellinus,  Ammianus  .  .  . 
Marius,  see  Maximus. 
Marius,  see  Victorinus. 

37 

162 
158 
30 
273 

Gallicanus,  Vulcacius       .  .  .     263 
Gallus,  G.  Cornelius         ...      1  22 
Gellius,  A  231 
Germanicus  157 

Gordianus,  M.  Antonius  .  .  .     262 
Gracchus,  G.  Sempronius            36 

Maro,  P.  Vergilius  
Martialis,  M.  Valerius 
Maternus,  Curiatius 
Matius,  Gn  
Maurus,  Terentianus 
Maximus,  Marius    

9i 
192 
192 

38 
261 
261 

Gratius  (or  Grattius)        ...      1  22 

Maximus,  Valerius  

164 

Mela,  Pomponius    

180 

Hemina,  L,  Cassius          ...        28 

Melissus,  Laevius   

38 

Hilarius         265,  271 

Minucius,  see  Felix. 

Hirtius,  A  81 
Honoratus,       Marius       (or 
Maurus)  Servius           .  .  .     272 
Horace,  see  Flaccus. 

Naevius,  Gn.            
Namatianus,  Claudius'Rutilius 
Naso,  P.  Ovidius    

S 
275 
lie 

Hortalus,  Q.  Hortensius       65,  86 
Hortensius,  see  Hortalus. 
Hyginus,  G.  Julius  164 

Nemesianus,     I.I.     Aurelius 
Olympius   
Nepos,  Cornelius    

262 

81 

Italicus,  Tib.  Catius  Silius         191 

Javolenus,  see  Priscus. 
Julianus.  Salvius     229 

Oppius,  G  

Ovid,  see  Naso. 

Pacuvius,  M.           ...          . 

81 
ii 

Junior,  Lucilius       182 

Palaernon,  Q.  Remmius       . 

i6r. 

Justinus,  M.  Junianus        163,  229 
juvenalis,  D.  Junius         .  .  .     221 
Juvencus,  G.  Vettius  Aquilinus  271 

Laberius,  Dec  87 
Lactantius,      L.      Caecilius 
Finnianus  255>  25& 

Palladius,  see  Aemilianus. 
Papinianus,  Aemilius 
Paterculus,  G.  Velleius 
Paulinus,  G.  Suetonius     .  .  . 
Paulinus,  Meropius  Pontius 
Anicius       
Paulus  (Diaconus)  

260 

163 
180 

257 
l6r. 

Laelius,  G  33 

Paulus,  Julius          

'•> 

2OI 

Lampridius,  Aelius           .  .  .     263 
Livius,  see  Andronicus. 

Pedianus,  Q.  Asconius     .  .  . 

2O4 
H7 

Livius,  T.         .  .      145 

Persius,  see  Flaccus. 

Index  of  Authors. 


289 


PAGE 

Petronius,  see  Arbiter. 

Phaedrus        160 

Philus,  L.  Furius 33 

Pictor,  Q.  Fabius 28 

Piso,  see  Frugi. 

Plautus,  T.  Maccius         ...  17 

Pliny,  see  Secundus. 

Pollio,  G.  Asinius  ...       121,  162 

Pollio,  Trebellius 263 

Pollio,  Vitruvius      1 66 

Priscianus      278 

Prise  us,  Javolenus 229 

Probus,  M.  Valerius         . . .  204 

Propertius,  Sex 123 

Prudentius,  see  Clemens. 
Publilius,  see  Syrus. 

Quadrigarius,  Q.  Claudius  36 

Quintilianus,  M.  Fabius  ...  197 

Rabirius         157 

Renatus,  Flavius  Vegetius  273 

Rufus,  M.  Caelius 75 

Rufus,  Q.  CurtSus 180 

Rufus,  Ser.  Sulpicius  ...  75 
Rufus,  L.  Varius  ...  121,  1 22 
Rutilius,  see  Namatianus. 

Sabinus          157 

Sallust,  see  Crispus. 
Sammonicus,  see  Serenus. 

Scaevola,  Q.  Mucius  ...  29 
Scipio,  see  Africanus. 

Secundus,  G.  Plinius  (major)  195 

"          (minor)  225 

Seneca,  L.  Annaeus  (major)  167 

"          (minor)  171 

Serenus,  Q.  Sammonicus  261 
Servius,  see  Honoratus. 

Severus,  Cornelius 157 

Siculus,  T.  Calpurnius  ...  181 
Sidonius,  G.  Sollius  Apolli- 

naris           278 


PACK 

Silius,  see  Italicus. 

Sisenna,  L.  Cornelius       ...  37 

Spartianus,  Aelius 263 

Statius,  P.  Papinius          . . .  187 

Stella,  L.  Arruntius          ...  192 
Suetonius,  see  Tranquillus. 

Sulla,  L.  Cornelius            ...  36 

Sulpicia  (major)     ...       130,  134 

Sulpicia  (minor)     192 

Sulpicius,  see  Rufus. 

Syrus,  Publilius       87 

Tacitus,  Cornelius 205 

Terentianus,  see  Maurus. 

Terentius,  P.            22 

Tertullianus,    Q.    Septimius 

Florens       251 

Tiberianus 263 

Tiberius,  see  Caesar. 

Tibullus,  Albius      130 

Tiro,  M.  Tullius      87 

Titinius          15 

Tranquillus,  G.  Suetonims  229 

Tribonianus 278 

Trogus,  Gn.  Pompeius     ...  163 

Turpilius        16 


Ulpianus,  Domitius 


260 


Valerius,  see  Antias. 

Valerius,  see  Flaccus. 

Valerius,  see  Maximus. 

Varius,  see  Rufus. 

Varro,  M.  Terentius         ...       85 

Varro,  P.  Terentius  (Atacinus)    87 

Vegetius,  see  Renatus. 

Verrius,  see  Flaccus. 

Victor,  Aurelius      273 

Victor  (Pope)          248 

Victorinus,  G.  Marius       ...     271 

Virgil,  see  Maro. 

Vitruvius,  see  Pollio. 

Vopiscus,  Flavius   . . .  263 


U 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

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LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library  from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


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2002 


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